George Cram Cook's The Spring: Bridging the Gap Between Spirituality and Science

By Rachel Hall '19, Yorkville, Ill., English; Senior Inquiry project

Chiropractic, a term coined by its founder D.D. Palmer, is a well established field of study in the United States. While many Americans know about chiropractic, perhaps having visited chiropractor on multiple occasions, less are aware of the field’s spiritual beginnings. According to Candy Gunther Brown, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, “chiropractic began as a metaphysical alternative to Christianity and modern medicine, a philosophical legacy from which current chiropractic has not altogether departed” (146). D.D. Palmer, a self-declared spiritualist, not only “viewed chiropractic as a culmination of his spiritual explorations,” but “attributed chiropractic principles to spiritual ‘communications’ from a deceased physician” (Brown, 147). He even considered defining chiropractic as a religion, though was advised against it by his son B.J. Palmer (148). How then, did his practice gain cultural acceptance and the prestige of modern science? “Those who are aware of chiropractic’s metaphysical origins tend to assume that the practice entered the cultural mainstream because it shed its religious philosophy,” when in actuality, its spokespersons carefully adopted terminology to portray the field as something scientific, spiritual, or even Christian (146). Promotional literature was developed strategically to mute religious overtones. By framing chiropractic in a more culturally accepted light, the field appealed to a broad range of people, and its metaphysical origins were soon forgotten.

Similarly, Sigmund Freud, known for his psychoanalytic theory that had become popular in the 20th century, is not as well known for his research in the occult, specifically telepathy. The reason for this may be that Freud’s notes and experiments on telepathy were unacknowledged by other scientists, who did not want his reputation getting tarnished (Massicotte). Ernst Jones, author of an influential biography of Freud, disregards his experiments regarding telepathy as a difficulty to overcome irrational superstitions, and omitted the questions that had motivated Freud’s investigations in the first place (Massicotte). In an effort to save reputation, Jones ignored Freud’s interest in an examination of the limits of human communication. Like Palmer, Freud’s psychological ideas were remembered while his spiritual drive to discover more about the human mind remains widely unknown.

Today, American culture tends to perceive spirituality and science as two completely distinct subjects. As exemplified by Palmer and Freud, the two are actually in conversation with one another, and were especially at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century. These subjects were also intertwined in the mind of Davenport writer George Cram Cook, who was alive during a rise in popularity of spirituality, theosophy, and occult beliefs roused by advancements in modern science. By considering Cook’s personal beliefs and experiences with these subjects, as well as the spiritual and scientific context of America during his lifetime, it becomes clear the influences behind his writing, most notably his play The Spring. As a result, The Spring demonstrates a necessary relationship between spirituality and psychology, ultimately advocating for both subjects to held to high standards and diligently explored without judgement. 

George Cram Cook, known among friends and family as Jig, was a deeply spiritual man. His mother Ellen was a theosophist, and shared with Jig her beliefs when he was young. Immediately, he was curious about the subject. Theosophy, which focuses on the attaining the direct knowledge of the nature of divinity and the origin of the universe through mystical insight, is a religious movement that originated in the U.S. in 1875, just two years after Jig was born. The movement sought truth above all religions, a value that Jig carried throughout his life and in his work. He rejected historical Christianity, though passages from his wife’s biography of him suggest he was introduced to the religion at a young age. In Jig’s biography written after his death by his wife Susan Glaspell, she describes one of his grandmothers, Eliza Ann, as becoming “a religious fanatic [whose] life ended disastrously” (5). Another passage describes Jig’s attempt to get used to very hot water in the bathtub after he first heard about hell, but he “could not force [himself] to hold [his] hand under the spigot when the water steamed” (25). It didn’t take long for him to seek out a more suitable religion for his personal beliefs.

When he was a college student at Iowa City, his interest in Greek philosophers heavily influenced his spirituality. One day at the University library, “his eyes were fixed on a page of Plotinus—descriptive of a state of mind called ecstasy, a state known to the mystics of every age. The mind of the sixteen-year-old boy was just opening with deep sense of its own marvel to the fact of its existence as a mind. Slowly, through infancy and childhood, unreflectingly as a flower; the complex thought he called ‘I’ had grown within him” (Glaspell, 34-35). In a journal Jig claims on this day he came into contact with “the conscious soul in the widespread world around him. It, the Macrocosm, was of one stuff with his own conscious self. He, the microcosm, was not different in kind from the great self of which earth and stars were but the multiform shadow. It was no mere algebraic perception of an abstraction this—it was vision” (36). In simpler terms, Jig had a vision of oneness between himself and the Universe, a theosophical idea that would later inspire his writing.

As a young adult, Jig and his friend Floyd Dell created the Monist Society of Davenport. In a letter he wrote to his friend Charles Eugene Banks, Jig writes about how they formed the Monist Society “for the propagation of our philosophy in the guise of religion, or religion in the guise of philosophy. It started with my Evolution paper” (Glaspell, 191). Cook studied Darwin and accepted his theory of evolution, introduced about a decade before Cook was born. It is likely that he was eager to involve himself in a theology that responded to modern science better than traditional Christianity had. The Monist Society is where Susan Glaspell became acquainted with George Cook in 1907, listening to him speak passionately of the principles of Monism: “The mind of man is not distinct from the rest of the universe. It is one form of the one nature. God did not create the one nature. It is eternal. No particle of it has ever perished or ever will. And this is Monism. God did not create man. Man rose in nature as one form of nature—even as sun and earth. And this is Monism!” (199). The group worked to change the city election, attacking in harsh letters to the papers the candidate for mayor who was on the The Library Board which refused to buy a book called “The Finality of the Christian Religion” (193). While Glaspell herself characterized the Monist Society as the “queer fish of the town,” the creation of the group should not be surprising given the spiritual context of Western culture in the early 20th century.

The Monist Society of Davenport was a small sample of a large number of people seeking a religion that better suited their scientific understandings of the world. A decline in traditional Christian beliefs occurred in response to advancements in science that increasingly questioned Christianity, especially “the historicity of the Genesis account, the age of earth, [and] the origin and nature of humankind” (Harvey, 110). At the same time as Cook, French philosopher Teilhard de Chardin studied and wrote works in which he “attempted to reconcile evolutionism with a spiritual view of the universe” (Ascari, 13) Like Cook, Teilhard shared a belief in a universal Self. British scholar E.N. Bennett was also publishing books on spiritualism, automatic writing, and the Society for Psychical Research in the same decade Cook wrote The Spring (Ascari, 10). Spiritualism had more than eight million followers in the United States and Europe by 1897 (New York Times). Spiritualists were working with, rather than against, new scientific discoveries and technological advancements to attempt to gain credibility. Advancements in technology in the late 19th century (X-rays, photographs, telegraphs, and telephones) suddenly “revealed reality” in a way that couldn’t have been done before. In this context, it is not surprising that Spiritualists also began to claim to discover “previously unimaginable modes of communication” including telepathy with deceased spirits (Harvey, 110). As advancements in technology and a spiritualist population began to grow, so too did the field of psychology.

To fully understand Cook’s intentions in writing about psychology in The Spring, it is relevant to consider the context of psychology in America, specifically regarding mental illness, during his lifetime. In The Journal of Psychology, public insane asylums are reported to have been erected as early as the 1840s, “largely as a result of the efforts of Dorothea Dix” and were built for the “‘furiously insane’ instead of placing them in almshouses when they had no visible means of support or in jails when they became homicidal, suicidal, or destructive” (Luchins, 472). The timing of a movement to build asylums across the nation, in sync with a seemingly separate spiritualism movement was a reflection of a “prevalent belief that the growing complexity and dislocations of American society had ill effects on people’s physical and mental health” and romantic beliefs “that urban life was unnatural due to its artificiality” (475). While psychoanalysis did not appear to explicitly be a part of the treatment for the insane, superintendents in the 19th century did believe that insanity started as early as childhood and the movement was “based on the assumption that early treatment would result in a reduction of the number of chronic patients in the community” (475). In other words, it was assumed that the earlier treatment began, the more curable someone’s insanity was, resulting in an influx of patients in public hospitals. Quickly, mental hospitals became overcrowded, especially due to large waves of immigrants increasing urban populations in the second half of the 19th century. Overcrowding combined with understaffing (due to long hours, low wages, and difficult work) led to many hospitals failing to achieve the original, generally positive, goals of the asylum movement. After the Civil War, sensational reports of inhumane treatment such as “solitary confinement, the use of restraints and forced feeding, beatings and abuse by attendants and disturbed patients, lack of privacy, [and] the poor quality of food” (478).

Not only were insane asylums beginning to receive backlash for inhumane treatment, but by the time George Cram Cook was born there was a growing number of better educated social workers who criticized asylum superintendents of practices that were “out of touch with the development of the social sciences” (479). The New York Neurological Society attempted to gain access to asylums in the 1870’s and 1880’s to combat the superintendent’s ignorance of medical knowledge and encourage clinical research to take place within the institutions. While George Cram Cook was growing up, it is likely he was aware of the criticisms of mental institutions coming from all directions and would have advocated for humane treatment of the mentally ill.

Iowa’s first mental hospital, referred to at the time as Mount Pleasant Insane Asylum and referenced in The Spring, didn’t open until 1861 (Calvert, 1024). Although Mount Pleasant shared the same issues are other state hospitals upon opening, namely overcrowding and understaffing, the reported treatment of patients seemed to be more humane than the sensational reports of other institutions. A report in 1878 listed the leading causes of insanity at Mt. Pleasant as “business anxiety, disappointments, over-exertion, excessive study, epilepsy, masturbation, intemperance, and religious excitement” (1026). These causes today sound like odd reasons to be admitted to a hospital, if they have any relation to mental illness at all. The list exemplifies just how easy it might have been for an individual to be admitted to Mt. Pleasant, and points out a negative cultural attitude toward new or enthusiastic religious ideas. George Cram Cook carries these themes into his play, The Spring.

In The Spring, Cook is careful to portray Elijah Robbins as a self-aware professor of psychology. When Elijah discovers Esther’s crystal-gazing ability, he decides that he wants to professionally experiment with her. Her vision is of Nam-e-qua, the daughter of the Native American leader Black Hawk, who 100 years earlier could look into the spring to see visions of the future. He admits to her that “most crystal visions are merely fanciful, but some are veridical. If yours was real--it would be important for me in an investigation--” (Cook, 42). Esther, surprised by what she had just seen, questions his fascination with her, asking “do you think we ought to let ourselves think such things?” to which Elijah responds: “I think we ought to face the truth about such things, and do what we can to correct them” (42). His approach to learning more about seemingly supernatural phenomena is practical, as he is aware of the deceptive nature of other mediums. Earlier when Elijah’s mother asks him how his psychic session went he tells her, “five of us sat there in the dark around a table. The replies of the spirits came from overhead. After fifteen minutes of it, I struck a match. It revealed the lady with a megaphone pointed at the ceiling,” to which Mrs. Robbins laughed (37). While real evidence of psychic ability is rare in The Spring, Elijah sees deep value in exploring the full potential of the human mind even if it means putting up with faulty mediums.

By taking scientific interest in mystical practices like crystal-gazing, and later in the play telepathy, hypnosis, and automatic writing, Elijah is trying to give his personal spiritual ideas about the world scientific backing. After witnessing Esther’s abilities, Elijah tells her there are only five or six recorded cases of crystal vision done by others and how important it is that she let him experiment with her. He thinks “the appearance of this faculty in you and others is the beginning of a new unfolding of the human soul” (47). He had been looking for a psychic sensitive like Esther for years, someone who was not “molded in advance by the prevalent ideas of the mediums.” What Elijah hopes to uncover through experimental research is “some sort of underground or wireless connection between minds. In trance the sensitive often shows ability to draw upon any desired knowledge, any relevant fact, which exists anywhere in any mind” (48). He wonders about things George Cram Cook himself felt: “Does each soul connect with every other? Am I in some way one with every man? If we find this true it will transform our conception of what mind is--of what a human being is” (49). Elijah is not interested in Esther because he believes together the two can gain fame or fortune. Rather, he knows his pursuit for knowledge can only be accomplished by testing his hypothesis on a genuine subject.

Dr. Chantland, on the other hand, represents a hierarchy in which traditional science is put above spiritual exploration, even if it denies the world from learning something new. Before Elijah can make any progress, Dr. Chantland, Esther’s father and the head of Elijah’s psychology, finds out what’s happening. To Chantland, his daughter’s abilities are queer and a sign of onset insanity. Elijah is quick to inform Chantland that automatic writing is not a disease, adding “in twenty-four out of twenty-five cases it is done by people with no nervous derangement (59). Chantland argues that both he and Esther’s doctor, Dr. Hadley, do not know that to be fact. Elijah retorts that Dr. Hadley’s “desire for ignorance is no credit to him” and asks, “if Miss Chantland’s “abnormality” consists merely in her ability to do automatic writing, why have her observed by a man who knows nothing about it?” (60). Elijah, who has only recently entered the field of psychology, is willing to sacrifice his good standing with his superior by challenging his practices. He believes Esther’s behaviors, especially because they are so rarely seen in others, ought to be treated with careful interest rather than immediately dismissed as insanity. Chantland warns Elijah that he is going to get himself “regarded in the academic world as a fantastic enthusiast” because of his “quasi-religious exaltation over matters which have to be dealt with scientifically” (67). Interestingly, Chantland’s idea of dealing scientifically equates to making use of currently accepted psychological practices, even at risk of uncovering ideas that could build on scientific knowledge. He threatens the severance of both Elijah’s professional relations with him and Elijah’s personal relations with Esther if he continues with his research, saying, “I didn’t know when I had you appointed that your chief interest in psychology lay in this dubious by-path, full of fraud” (67). Chantland’s unwillingness to explore ideas outside the realm of his own academic understanding and threats against Elijah demonstrate the dangers of basing a scientist’s legitimacy on sticking to the status quo. The spiritual ideas Chantland is dismissing are ideas that could potentially discredit his, or an older generation of scientists’, previous work. Elijah’s approach is that new ideas could correct the public’s understanding, if not add to it.

Not only The Spring demonstrate the flaws of a system that favors limited ways of thinking, but the progress that must be made in the realm of mental health. After a hypnotic session with Esther leaves her in hysterics, Elijah worries Dr. Hadley will be “taken away as a lunatic, and if they take her they’ll make her one” (88). His concerns prove valid as Hadley suggests Chantland consider sending his daughter to Mt. Pleasant. Chantland is familiar with Mt. Pleasant, remarking “the hospital for the--the asylum. That’s terrible!” (91). Though Elijah later accuses Chantland of wanting to send his daughter away, his description here of sending her to Mt. Pleasant as terrible suggests the characters in The Spring are aware of problems with mental institutions. It seems as though Mt. Pleasant exists in this play to keep people away from the public eye rather than to help them achieve the best mental state possible. Elijah’s father, Ira Robbins, proposes that Esther stay at home with them as the effect on taking her to Mt. Pleasant would be “most unfortunate--the stigma” (95). Hadley agrees with Ira’s idea, adding “the quiet of a place like this” is exactly what she needs (95). Upon hearing Hadley’s suggestion, Elijah argues, “there is no derangement! Don’t you think before forming a conclusion that you ought to have my report of the facts?” (92). Rather than getting the full scope of information about Esther’s condition, Hadley is quick to pit Elijah as insane too for having “incredible” ideas. Chantland asks Dr. Hadley what he will do if they are compelled to overpower Elijah, and Dr. Hadley replies: “Lock him up. I’ll take him right in and turn him over to the authorities. I could take him straight to Mt. Pleasant and have Judge Parsons make out the papers afterward.” (94). The ease at which a doctor could send someone to an insane asylum without a thorough examination demonstrates a huge problem with the treatment of mental health. It is especially troubling how eager Hadley and Chantland are to send Elijah to Mt. Pleasant after pointing out it wouldn’t be the most positive option for treating Esther’s behaviors.

While The Spring is of course a fictional play, it portrays crystal visions and other practices currently regarded as pseudoscience as true while portraying psychology in academia and mental institutions as failing to pursue truth. Elijah gets locked up after violence breaks out between him and Chantland, on the charge of dangerous insanity. After managing to escape, he not only proves himself to be sane, but proves to the others the reality of hypnosis by curing Esther from her hysteria after the doctors could not. As a result of Chantland dying from his injuries, Elijah will spend his youth in prison. It is unclear what Dr. Hadley and other characters will do with the knowledge of Elijah and Esther’s true abilities, and it is also unclear if Elijah’s physical retaliation to Chantland was indeed the cause of his death. Even though Elijah will be locked up, his spiritual experiment prevails as Esther promises to be with him, knowing her “father’s spirit will see more and must forgive” her (140). For Elijah, that is victory.

By demonstrating the ways in which psychologists defend what they hold to be true at the expense of ignoring new theories stemming from a natural, spiritual curiosity about the world, Cook is suggesting that both psychology and spirituality be explored with open hearts and open minds in order for a real shot at finding truth in the Universe. If our culture limits a crossover between occult beliefs and what is culturally accepted science, it limits our potential to learn about the world holistically. By the second half of the twentieth century, it was often scientists who were promoting “a new investigation into the nature of knowledge and of things that combine Western scientific approaches and Eastern traditions of mysticism” (Ascari, 14). In hopes of creating a more well-rounded perspective of the world, “New Age advocates of the spiritual have freely blended mysticism, religion, ecology, ancient myths and modern fictions, scientific discoveries and pseudo-scientific theories” to offer “an opportunity for dialogue between very different ideas of knowledge” (Ascari, 17). These approaches are not as popular today as they ought to be. A quick search of the word “religion” in an online thesaurus will bring up words like “cult,” “myth” and “spirituality.” “Science,” on the other hand, will result in words including “discipline,” “education,” “learning,” and “wisdom.” While of course science and spirituality are not synonymous, Cook demonstrates in The Spring the value that can come from a perception of learning about the world in all different types of ways. Whether or not Cook’s personal spiritual beliefs are popular, his propositions in The Spring are admirable: embrace new ideas regardless of whether we label them as scientific or spiritual, and place the overall wellbeing of individuals above anything else.

Works Cited

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“THREE FORMS OF THOUGHT; M.M. Mangassarian Addresses the Society for Ethical Culture at Carnegie Music Hall. UNREST OF THE HUMAN MIND Theosophy, Spiritualism, and Christian Science Discussed -- The Theory of Reaction a Fallacy -- Ineffectiveness of the Spiritualistic Idea.” New York Times, 29 Nov. 1897.