Page:The Quimby Manuscripts.djvu/313

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
DISEASE AND HEALING
309

she put the child down she could see that her will guided its motion. This was so apparent to her that she could in some measure counteract the wrong motion of the child. With my own wisdom attached to the child's will I soon changed the mind so that the child walked much better.

THE HEALING PRINCIPLE

It is an undisputed fact that Dr. Quimby cures disease, and that without any medicine or outward applications. How does he do it? is the question that agitates and interests the people. If he has any new way different from the mysterious and superstitious mode acknowledged by others who have appeared to cure disease by personal virtue alone, what is it? Where does he get his power?

He denies that he has any power or gift superior to other men. He contends that he operates intelligently under the direction of a Principle which is always his guide while with the sick. He follows this Principle in practice and theory, and under it he learns facts of real life that he could never get in any other way. He has found the way by which all errors can be corrected. . . .

It might be called the Principle of Goodness. It is the highest intelligence that operates in the affairs of man, always producing harmony, and making man feel that he has more to learn and is a progressive being. . . . It has been his aim to develop this principle in relation to human misery and make life a science. The cause of all misery is in ignorance of ourselves, and in proportion as he develops this higher, happier portion of mankind, which he calls Science, he sees through the miseries and the ills, and just in proportion as he sees through them he can correct them. . . . With a knowledge that all trouble is a false alarm . . . he proceeds to undermine the foundations, and the structure gives way. However well established are the facts of any disease, he believes the basis all wrong, dependent on the opinions of men for an existence. . . . To destroy the belief identified with a patient's feelings, changes the mind, and that is the cure. . . . The mind is something and embraces a much larger compass of our being than we are taught to consider it. It includes all opinions and [conventional] religion, and everything about us which can change; not that part which is seen by the natural eye, but that which acts upon the natural man. It embraces all excitement and agita-