Jay Hudson

February 22, 1834 (age 69)

Windham, Ohio, United States

He was admitted to the Cleveland bar in 1857 and for the following three years practised law at Mansfield, Ohio. He then moved to Port Huron, Mich. , where he began to practise law, but soon turned to journalism. He was in turn an editor of the Port Huron Commercial Daily, of the Detroit Daily Union, and of the Detroit Evening News. In 1866 he was a candidate for the United States Senate but was defeated. In 1877 he became the Washington, D. C. , correspondent for the Scripps syndicate. Three years later his career took another decided turn when he entered the United States Patent Office and from 1886 until 1893 he held the post of chief examiner. In the meantime he had become increasingly interested in psychology and psychical phenomena, and in 1893 he published his best-known work, The Law of Psychic Phenomena. Over a hundred thousand copies of this volume were sold and it served to popularize both him and his subject to such a degree that he resigned from the Patent Office and devoted himself entirely to lecturing and writing. He is largely responsible for making the terms "subjective mind" and "suggestion" household words in America. His "hypothesis" was that all mental and psychic phenomena could be explained as the effects of the objective mind (the ordinary mortal mind) operating by the power of suggestion upon the subjective mind, which is incapable of inductive reasoning, but which is immortal and which immediately controls the non-cerebral organs of the body. This theory was intended to supplant the doctrines of animal magnetism, Christian Science, and other more primitive explanations of hypnotism, faith-healing, and other phenomena; and it served to recommend "auto-suggestion" as on the whole not a dangerous, but a therapeutic agency, whereby man exposes himself to his "higher and heavenly" faculties. But the popular religious uses to which Hudson put the ideas of the "subjective mind" incurred the enmity of the scientists and robbed the term of its experimental value. Encouraged by his popular success, Hudson developed his ideas in a theological direction. In 1895 he published A Scientific Demonstration of the Future Life and in 1899, The Divine Pedigree of Man. In the last-named volume he attempted to expand his ideas into a doctrine of evolution. He explained the evolutionary, racial, reproductive, or altruistic, instinct as the work of the subjective mind; the instinct of conservatism or self-preservation, on the other hand, as largely the work of the human brain which is the chief organ of the objective mind. Darwin's principle of "natural selection" thus becomes merely a particular instance of the conflict between these two fundamental instincts. Theism is simply the assertion that the evolutionary instinct is the "divine pedigree" in man, or that man is made in the image of God. These evolutionary speculations, however, failed to attract much popular attention, and Hudson confined his later activities largely to the Medico-Legal Society, of which he was a member, and to its Journal. In 1903 he published The Law of Mental Medicine and in 1904 his son, Charles B. Hudson, published a volume of his papers under the title, The Evolution of the Soul and Other Essays. He died in Detroit.

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Agnosticism

(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)

Scientific Demonstration of the Future Life

(NEARLY three years have now elapsed since the publication...)

In The Image Of God

(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)

The Law Of Psychic Phenomena

(The primary object of this book is to assist in bringing ...)

The Evolution of The Soul & Other Essays

(IN arranging the following essays and lectures for public...)

The Law of Mental Medicine: The Correlation of the Facts of Psychology and Histology in Their Relation to Mental Therapeutics. Sixth Edition

( About the Book Legal history is the study of how law ha...)

The Divine Pedigree of Man

(IN attempting to fulfil a task so important, and from a l...)

Jay Thomson Hudson Edit Profile

scientist author

Background

Hudson was born in Windham, Ohio in 1834. He was the son of John and Ruth (Pulsifer) Hudson. The early years of his life were spent on his father's farm and in the schools of his native town.

Education

He was destined by his father for the ministry and was given private tutoring in college subjects with that end in view, but instead he turned to law.

Career

He was admitted to the Cleveland bar in 1857 and for the following three years practised law at Mansfield, Ohio. He then moved to Port Huron, Mich. , where he began to practise law, but soon turned to journalism. He was in turn an editor of the Port Huron Commercial Daily, of the Detroit Daily Union, and of the Detroit Evening News. In 1866 he was a candidate for the United States Senate but was defeated. In 1877 he became the Washington, D. C. , correspondent for the Scripps syndicate. Three years later his career took another decided turn when he entered the United States Patent Office and from 1886 until 1893 he held the post of chief examiner. In the meantime he had become increasingly interested in psychology and psychical phenomena, and in 1893 he published his best-known work, The Law of Psychic Phenomena. Over a hundred thousand copies of this volume were sold and it served to popularize both him and his subject to such a degree that he resigned from the Patent Office and devoted himself entirely to lecturing and writing.

He is largely responsible for making the terms "subjective mind" and "suggestion" household words in America. His "hypothesis" was that all mental and psychic phenomena could be explained as the effects of the objective mind (the ordinary mortal mind) operating by the power of suggestion upon the subjective mind, which is incapable of inductive reasoning, but which is immortal and which immediately controls the non-cerebral organs of the body. This theory was intended to supplant the doctrines of animal magnetism, Christian Science, and other more primitive explanations of hypnotism, faith-healing, and other phenomena; and it served to recommend "auto-suggestion" as on the whole not a dangerous, but a therapeutic agency, whereby man exposes himself to his "higher and heavenly" faculties. But the popular religious uses to which Hudson put the ideas of the "subjective mind" incurred the enmity of the scientists and robbed the term of its experimental value.

Encouraged by his popular success, Hudson developed his ideas in a theological direction. In 1895 he published A Scientific Demonstration of the Future Life and in 1899, The Divine Pedigree of Man. In the last-named volume he attempted to expand his ideas into a doctrine of evolution. He explained the evolutionary, racial, reproductive, or altruistic, instinct as the work of the subjective mind; the instinct of conservatism or self-preservation, on the other hand, as largely the work of the human brain which is the chief organ of the objective mind. Darwin's principle of "natural selection" thus becomes merely a particular instance of the conflict between these two fundamental instincts. Theism is simply the assertion that the evolutionary instinct is the "divine pedigree" in man, or that man is made in the image of God.

These evolutionary speculations, however, failed to attract much popular attention, and Hudson confined his later activities largely to the Medico-Legal Society, of which he was a member, and to its Journal. In 1903 he published The Law of Mental Medicine and in 1904 his son, Charles B. Hudson, published a volume of his papers under the title, The Evolution of the Soul and Other Essays.

He died in Detroit.