of the sick, knowing that it is all the effect of a superstitious ignorance. Does not the South quote the Bible to prove that slavery is of Divine origin? Do not the priests and doctors quote the old heathen superstition to bolster up a weak and feeble edifice just ready to crumble and crush the leaders? Is not Science raising her voice and crying aloud to the people saying how long shall it be till the old heathen idolatry shall come to an end and man shall learn wisdom and be his own master and not a slave?[1]
MIND AND DISEASE
Men create ideas which are matter. These ideas have a real existence in the spiritual world, and their power is according to the nature that is attributed to them, and the fear that men have of them. Fear of an idea thus created, on the part of its creator, condenses its matter so that it might be seen even by the natural eye, a creation composed of the loathsome characteristics conceived of by the person's own belief, an offspring of an excited and degraded mind. Such an idea is disease, the child of the devil. This disease was first one simple, uncompounded idea. But when that finally was pushed into an identity, when men were once afraid of it, then it grew rapidly, like a poisonous weed, and derived its sustenance from the very life-blood to which it owed its existence. All its horrible characteristics it draws from the mind of men, who, could they only understand what they are doing, would plant a good seed in their soil or mind, which could bear no fruit fit for disease to live on, and thus it would starve to death. . . . As mind is matter, its form can be annihilated.
The basis of Dr. Quimby's theory is that there is no intelligence, no power or action in matter of itself, that the spiritual world to which our eyes are closed by ignorance or unbelief is the real world, that in it lie all the causes for every effect visible in the natural world, and that if this spiritual life can be revealed to us, in other words if we can understand ourselves, we shall then have our happiness or misery in our own hands; and of course much of the suffering of the world will be done away with.
He does not deny that cures, as many and great as you
- ↑ Nov, 1861.
