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ALBERT F. GILMORE, CSB The Literary Review of the New York Evening Post
Neither Quimby nor Mrs. Eddy originated the idea that the cause of disease is mental; likewise the cure. Mental healing had exponents centuries before Quimby and his contemporaries either thought or wrote of this subject. The International Encyclopedia (Vol. XV, p. 413) says of mental science: "Eginhard, an intimate of Charlemagne, was the first to make recorded observations in any way analogous to modern mental healing." Julius A. Dresser, a patient of Quimby and promoter of New Thought, in "The True History of Mental Science" states: "The foundation principles of what we now term mental science are shown by history to have been largely understood by the philosophers of all ages." Accepting the reviewer's statement that "plagiarism is like a question of priority in patents," when we examine the literature of the middle decades of the nineteenth century we find a coterie of writers upon mental healing, some of whom published works on the subject before the dates of Quimby's manuscripts. Some of these authors were practitioners of different phases of mental healing, among them being John Bovee Dods, the Rev. W. F. Evans, and Andrew Jackson Davis. Quotations from a single one of these will serve to indicate the type of thought current at that time. In "Six Lectures on the Philosophy of Mesmerism" Mr. Dods states: "All motion and power originate in mind, and as the human spirit, through an electro-magnetic medium, comes in contact with matter, so the infinite spirit does the same." In the "Philosophy of Electrical Psychology" Mr. Dods said: "Mind is the first great moving cause"; "I am well aware that mental and physical impressions may be termed causes of diseases"; also, "Mind, or spirit, is above all and absolutely disposes of and controls all." From these and other writings of similar tenor it is manifest that Quimby expressed the thought that was current with his predecessors and contemporaries in regard to the mental cause and cure of disease. While seeking relief from bodily ills which she knew to have mental cause Mrs. Eddy discovered the Science of being and divine law. Upon these fundamental facts she developed a system of religion and practice explained in the Christian Science textbook; but as her fundamentals were original with her as well as the rule and method, it was by no means plagiarism to employ words and terms used by others — in fact, she could do no less. The author of a new method in arithmetic of necessity uses terms, signs, and symbols employed in general by others who have preceded him; but he is by no means guilty of the charge of plagiarism if the system he develops is original with himself. The religion known as Christian Science originated with Mrs. Eddy, and neither sophistry, misrepresentation, nor falsity can destroy the facts. Professor Sorley, in a volume just published on English philosophy, speaks of the empirical logic of John Stuart Mill and the ideas of Darwin "which Spencer worked into a system" of philosophy; yet he does not even hint at a charge of plagiarism. None of these writers on the various phases of mental cure of disease nor did Quimby set forth the fundamental teachings of Christian Science, including the facts of being, the truth about God, man, and the universe; no more did these writers discover the law by which Jesus and his disciples healed the sick. Mrs. Eddy, on the other hand, did discover divine law, its method and application; and she proved the validity of her discovery beyond possibility of refutation by doing the works performed by Jesus and his disciples, healing the sick not by hypnotism, mesmerism, or magnetism, but by the utilization of divine law, the power of [M]ind — invoked through the prayer of understanding — upon human minds and bodies. Christian Science Christianizes human consciousness, destroying disease by the power of the Christ. In this discovery Mrs. Eddy was the pioneer, with no exemplar except Christ Jesus and his disciples. Apparently Quimby got his ideas from the study of disease, from the carnal mind with its beliefs of sickness and discord. On page 277 of "The Quimby Manuscripts" he says, "It is necessary to say that I have no religious belief." Also on page 217, "Prayer contains no knowledge and only leaves men in ignorance and superstition." The first chapter of Science and Health begins, "The prayer that reforms the sinner and heals the sick is an absolute faith that all things are possible to God, — a spiritual understanding of Him, an unselfed love." With Mrs. Eddy the Bible was the source of inspiration. Quimby's was purely a mortal or human mind remedy; Christian Science is a spiritual, and therefore scientific, treatment. Mrs. Eddy, long ill, sought healing from Quimby and temporarily believed herself benefited by his treatment. To understand the import of this incident, however, it should be recalled that prior to her experience with him she had lost faith in material methods of healing, had experimented somewhat in homeopathy, and had developed a firm conviction that the cause of all disease was mental and could be healed by spiritual means. In at least two instances she had been able to accomplish healing of serious ailments in others without the use of drugs. (See "Life of Mary Baker Eddy," by Sibyl Wilbur.) Her healing from Quimby's treatment, however, was not permanent and she came to understand that his method was not spiritual but magnetic, or mesmeric and hypnotic. It is clear to the unprejudiced that she looked upon him as utilizing the healing principle which she had come to regard as available in the cure of disease. She endowed him with her own exalted ideas of the true Christian ministry, again exemplified, as she believed, in healing sickness. While both the editor of this volume and the reviewer wish to impress upon its readers that Quimby progressed out of the use of hypnotism and magnetism as methods of healing, the use of which he frankly admitted, into a purely mental system, they pillory Mrs. Eddy for the assertion that subsequent to her experience with Quimby, and after her own discovery of divine healing, she came to understand that she had entirely misinterpreted his method. That is to say, they deny her the possibility of progressive understanding which they claim for him. A careful perusal of the letters from Mrs. Patterson (Mrs. Eddy) appearing in the volume in question leads one to the conviction that during the three or four years which passed between her first visit to Quimby and his death, in 1866, she was far from enjoying good health, as she was frequently appealing to him for help. If his ministrations had really healed her, there would have been no occasion for these frequent appeals; and while the letter of April 24, 1865, from her husband, Dr. Patterson, states that his wife is greatly improved in health, it does not state that she was healed even then. The letter on page 163, written to Julius Dresser on February 15, 1866, almost a year later, and after the death of Quimby, is a piteous appeal for help apparently sent in the hope that he had gained knowledge from Quimby which he might use to relieve her distress. In the fact that Dresser, even though a patient and friend of Quimby, was unable to help her is good evidence that no system of healing had been developed. Of this situation Mrs. Eddy writes in The Christian Science Journal of June, 1887: "Before understanding and settling the great question of my discovery, I wrote to Mr. Dresser, who had tried Mr. Quimby's cure by manipulation, and asked him if he could help anybody, or tell me how Quimby healed. He replied, in a letter which I have, to the effect that he could not, and was unable to heal his wife of a slight ailment; adding, that he did not believe any one living knew how Mr. Quimby healed the sick." Manifestly if Quimby had developed a system of healing his most intimate friends were not aware of it. No more were they able to explain it to another or to use it in healing disease. As to Quimby's method of treatment, there is complete evidence in the book itself that it bore no resemblance to the practice of Christian Science. First of all, Christian Science is Christianity; that is, it is based upon the teachings of Christ Jesus and reproduces his practices. On the other hand, there is no proof that Quimby's method had a Christian basis. In fact, he denies the very fundamentals of Christianity, namely, the immaculate conception, the resurrection of Jesus, and the efficacy of prayer — which are basic in the teachings of Christian Science. In a letter written by George A. Quimby in 1904 appears this statement: "A word or two about Mrs. Eddy. No one — least of all myself — disputes her claims that she is the originator of Christian Science. As far as the religious aim goes it is hers — the facsimile of the author on the label and her picture blown in the bottle and stamped on the cork." Although the spirit of the letter as a whole is hostile to Mrs. Eddy, its author disclaims that his father, whose secretary he was for a considerable period, was in any sense an originator of Christian Science, that is, of "its religious aim." This view is corroborated in another statement by him on Nov. 11, 1901 (p. 436, "The Quimby Manuscripts"): "As far as the book, 'Science and Health,' is concerned, Mrs. Eddy had no access to father's manuscripts [save 'Questions and Answers'] when she wrote it, but that she did have a very full knowledge of his ideas and beliefs is also true. The religion which she teaches certainly is hers, for which I cannot be too thankful; for I should be loath to go down to my grave feeling that my father was in any way connected with 'Christian Science.'" Of the lack of logic and coherence in Quimby's writings citation of a few characteristic passages will suffice. On page 244 he says: "Our life is in our senses: and if our wisdom is in our mind, we attach our life and senses to matter . . . matter is the medium of Wisdom." On the following page he says: "Our senses are not life. But all of these are solid and eternal; and to know them is life and life eternal." "The word 'life' cannot be applied to Wisdom, for that has no beginning and life has." Also on page 234, "The elements of the mineral kingdom by their chemical change bring forth life;" and on page 227, "You know I have tried to prove that mind is spiritual matter; and if I have proved that, I will now show you that matter is life." To compare these statements with the clear, definite, and logical declarations of Christian Science is to reveal the impassable gulf which exists between his sayings and this religion. Moreover, many of the statements are self-contradictory and there is lack of a logical, philosophical thought running through the pages. They suggest a struggle for light in the darkness and confusion of mental uncertainty. As to the manuscripts themselves, it is recalled that a controversy has waged over them for more than forty years. Every now and then a canard has been put forth denying Mrs. Eddy's statements as to the source of her discovery and its development. Furthermore, it should not be overlooked that the editor of this volume, the son of Julius A. Dresser, is a well-known New Thought advocate, lecturer, and author. He is following in his father's footsteps in his efforts to deprive Mrs. Eddy of her position as Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science and to discredit her teachings, and he constantly presses his claims. It has not been revealed whether the manuscripts published in this book are the originals or the copies which George Quimby said had been made of his father's original writings by the Misses Ware, himself, and others. There are many who believe that during the controversy which has been waged around these alleged manuscripts for more than twoscore years, there may have been incorporated in them much of the teaching which Mrs. Eddy herself had published in her numerous books. Such a situation is not without precedent, and that she believed it was probable is seen in the statement attached to her offer to pay for publishing them. No more should it be overlooked that these writings have been in the custody of those openly hostile to Christian Science, and that the testimony of persons who examined them in former years is altogether contrary to the conclusions of Dresser and Riley. Is it not most significant that a man so hostile to Christian Science as Dr. Lyman P. Powell was at one time, after having carefully examined the Quimby manuscripts in preparation for writing a pamphlet attacking Christian Science, has recently stated in the "Cambridge History of American Literature": "Christian Science as it is to-day is really its Founder's creation. Where she got this idea, or that, little matters. As a whole, the system described in Science and Health is hers, and nothing that can ever happen will make it less than hers." When he examined these manuscripts he did not find in them that which led him to believe that Mrs. Eddy was guilty of the charge of plagiarism, which Professor Riley so strenuously forces upon her in his review. It will be recalled that Dr. Powell was an Episcopal clergyman, formerly president of Hobart College. Furthermore, it should not be overlooked that the manuscripts have been offered for sale from time to time to Christian Scientists and its antagonists, indicating that it was the desire of the owners to profit from the controversy. Judge Septimus J. Hanna, a man of scholarly attainment and sound Christian principles, after personally examining the Quimby manuscripts said: "I can personally say that no intelligent, unbiased person having any understanding or ability to understand 'Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures' could for a single moment be made to believe that there is the slightest resemblance between the two. That the author of the mighty spiritual truths which form the warp and woof of the Christian Science textbook could have borrowed the smallest ray of light from Dr. Quimby's fragmentary jottings, however meritorious in themselves, is too preposterous for a moment's serious consideration" (Christian Science History, p. 25). Mrs. Anneta G. Dresser, wife of Julius A., in a volume entitled "The Philosophy of Phineas P. Quimby" (p. 50), states, "But she (Mrs. Eddy) put her own construction on much of his teaching and developed a system of thought that differed radically from it." It is worthy of note that only a portion of Quimby's writings are included in the volume, and instead of being arranged in chronological sequence they are arranged in a way that in the editor's judgment best subserves his purpose. As to the method Quimby practiced, there is evidence which seems conclusive. As has been stated, it is frankly admitted that before developing his later method, he was in order a mesmerist and a magnetic healer; and it is well authenticated by many witnesses that his treatment to the end of his career was magnetic. Nearly a score of attested letters declaring this to be the character of his treatments are at hand, but space will not permit quotations. A footnote at the bottom of page 163 of the book under consideration states that Julius Dresser did not respond to Mrs. Eddy's appeal for help sent in deep distress after the death of Quimby. But he did and in his reply he not only said he had no knowledge of Quimby's method of healing, but also said if he had he would scarcely dare to use it in view of what happened to Quimby. It is notable that Dresser did not take up lecturing on mental healing or its practice until some years after the appearance of Science and Health. The evidence seems conclusive that no one of Quimby's patients and friends had a knowledge of his methods definite enough to enable him to carry on his work. The business card of one of these, the Rev. W. F. Evans, who took up the teaching and practice of mental healing, in 1884, advertised himself as a practitioner of "mesmerism in improved forms." Many of your readers will agree that there is no better test of the truth of any method, system, device, or doctrine than its works. Are the results of its application good or bad? Truly the Master's criterion, "By their fruits ye shall know them," is righteous judgment. The healing and regenerating works of Christian Science are too well known to admit of any possibility of refutation or denial. Through its ministrations the sick are healed, the sinning reclaimed, the sorrowing comforted, and the poor supplied with the needful things. Speaking of the efforts of those hostile to Christian Science to destroy her good works through discrediting and defaming her, Mrs. Eddy says in "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" (p. 143): "Above all this fustian of either denying or asserting the personality and presence of Mary Baker Eddy, stands the eternal fact of Christian Science and the honest history of its Discoverer and Founder. It is self-evident that the discoverer of an eternal truth cannot be a temporal fraud." It is only fair to contrast these "good works" of Christian Science with the accomplishment of the early exponents of mental therapy, — Davis, Dods, Evans, and Quimby. Granting all that this book claims and all that Dresser has held about Quimby's ability to heal the sick, it cannot be claimed that through his methods, whatever they were, the true healing which constitutes spiritual regeneration was ever accomplished. The true healing process, revealing the Mind of Christ and opening vistas of spiritual being, constitutes that understanding of God which Christ Jesus declared is life eternal. This Mrs. Eddy rediscovered and incorporated with its system and rule in the Christian Science textbook.
Published in the Christian Science Sentinel, February 18, 1922 For more information on this subject, click here. |
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