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of matter for evil as well as for good. Now the little handful of struggling neophytes had not learned how to meet this evil and were doubtless more or less frightened at the notion of it.
Some of the students saw in the dereliction of Daniel Spofford the operation of malicious animal magnetism,[1] and became much alarmed. Miss Lucretia Brown of Ipswich particularly declared that Mr. Spofford was causing her to suffer a relapse into ill health by calling upon her and suggesting that she was not in health. Miss Dorcas Rawson, who was one of the earliest students, was Miss Brown’s teacher and healer. She reported
- ↑ Malicious Animal Magnetism is a term used in Christian Science, and perhaps it may be proper to define its significance, since it has been largely misapprehended in the public press of late. The word magnetism was first applied to a peculiar attraction of iron ore, so named because it was discovered in the city of Magnesia. Later the word animal was joined to it to define electrical experiments with an animal. This term, animal magnetism, eventually came to include the peculiar influence one person was able to exert over another by physical contact. In this sense animal magnetism is similar, if not identical, with the term mesmerism, referring directly to the experiments of Mesmer. The more modern term, hypnotism, has the peculiar significance of the power of mind over mind without the necessity of actual physical contact. … Through Mrs. Eddy’s teaching, the term animal magnetism has become broad enough to include any and all action of the human mind, applying it to that peculiar power, influence, or force which is possessed by the creature in contradistinction to the Creator. Since Christian Science has introduced the proposition that God is the only real Mind, the carnal mind in all its varied manifestations is naturally, in the interest of self-preservation, arrayed against it. Therefore, every wilful phase of this human opposition which is created by the introduction of Science is malicious. Hence the use of the term malicious animal magnetism. It is magnetism because it refers to a supposed power independent of God; malicious, in keeping with the Scriptural declaration, “The Carnal mind is enmity against God.” Mrs. Eddy refers to it as the human antipode of Divine Science. It is a term which is broad enough to include all that is opposed to God. It includes every phase of evil, every phase of human antagonism to truth. — From an interview with Alfred Farlow in Human Life, August, 1907.
