of spirit, but the confusion, temporarily wrought in her, induced her to give honor where honor was not due.
In later years, roused by the assault of critics hostile to her restatements of Christ’s teachings, Mrs. Eddy wrote fearlessly of her confused condition at this period. She related how for years she struggled with the effects of Dr. Quimby’s practise, acknowledging that she had written and talked of him with ignorant enthusiasm until she realized the harmful influence of teaching such “a false human concept.” She said:
It has always been my misfortune to think people bigger and better than they really are. My mistake is to endow another person with my ideal and then to make him think it his own. … I would touch tenderly his [Quimby’s] memory, speak reverently of his humane purpose, and name only his virtues, did not this man [Julius Dresser] drive me for conscience’s sake to sketch the facts. … I was ignorant of the basis of animal magnetism twenty years ago, but know now that it would disgrace and invalidate any mode of medicine. The animal poison imparted through mortal mind by false or incorrect mental physicians, is more destructive to health and morals than are the mineral and vegetable poisons prescribed by the matter physicians. … I denounced it [Quimby’s method] after a few of my first students rubbed the heads of their patients and the immorality of one student opened my eyes to the horrors possible in animal magnetism. I discovered the Science of Mind healing and that was enough. It was the way Christ had pointed out; and that had glorified it. My
