364 



METAPHYSICS, AMERICAN. 



Ware, of the Supreme Court, who wei - e also pa- 

 tients of Mr. Quimby's, who is said to have restored 

 them both to health, and who wrote down his say- 

 ings as they fell from his lips. These, together 

 with the memory of a few persons still living, save 

 from oblivion the founder of a now widely known 

 cult a man who never dreamed of fame and died 

 without fortune. His son's account shows him to 

 have been a pioneer in thought and experiment 

 from his earliest years, even inventing many me- 

 chanical devices for which he took out patents. 

 He was also a semi-invalid from early youth, whom 

 the doctors had pronounced a victim of an incura- 

 ble malady of the lungs. 



In 1833 a French gentleman, M. Charles Poyan, 

 came to this country, where he had relatives, and 

 brought with him the first practical information 

 known here of mesmerism, through which agency 

 he claimed to have been cured of a chronic disease. 

 Mr. Quimby heard his lectures, and at once seized 

 upon the idea; first with the desire to better his 

 own health, and second, to discover all that might 

 be in it. He met with a youth named Lucius 

 Burkmar, who proved a wonderful subject, and 

 with him he worked and gave experiments that 

 astonished those who saw them, but did not con- 

 vince Mr. Quimby himself. He finally came to the 

 conclusion that there was nothing in mesmerism 

 save what was reflected through the mind of the 

 subject from the minds of those about Him. Then 

 he gave it up. One day, while he was out for a 

 drive with a horse and buggy loaned by a friend, 

 the exertion made him so weak he could no longer 

 hold the reins, and the horse had it all his own 

 way. The animal took fright and was in danger 

 of ending both himself and the rider. In this 

 emergency, Mr. Quimby grasped the reins, when in- 

 stantly more strength than he had known for years 

 came back to him, and he was able to control the 

 animal and bring him to terms, and the strength 

 lasted during the whole period of his need for it. 



This incident made the turning point in his ca- 

 reer. It set him to investigating the nature of 

 that preternatural strength. From this proceeded 

 step by step his subsequent discoveries concerning 

 the latent force within others as well as himself, 

 its connection with universal force, and the source 

 of it all. He experimented, and by degrees was 

 successful. The fame of his strange mode of treat- 

 ment and its strange results grew till it obliged 

 him to leave Belfast and settle in Portland. Dur- 

 ing the six or seven years that he practiced in that 

 city people flocked to him from various parts of 

 the country, but especially from New England. 

 It was in the early sixties that the Misses Ware 

 took to writing down his philosophy, which he 

 himself called The Science of Health. Among 

 others who came to him for treatment in 1862, per- 

 sons still living recall Mrs. Eddy (then Mrs. Pat- 

 terson), whom, it is said, he cured of a supposed to 

 be hopeless trouble. Dr. Quimby died Jan. 10, 

 ISliO, aged sixty-four years. In that same year 

 Mrs. Eddy says she discovered Christian Science. 

 Mr. Quimby's son says: " The last five years of his 

 life were exceptionally hard. He was overcrowded 

 with patients and greatly overworked, and could 

 not find an opportunity for relaxation. At last 

 Nature could no longer bear up under the strain. 

 Completely tired out, he took to his bed, from 

 which he never rose again. . . . Mr. Quimby's idea 

 of happiness," continues his son, " was to benefit 

 mankind, especially the sick and suffering, and to 

 that end he labored and gave his life. His patients 

 found in him not only a doctor, but a sympathetic 

 friend, and he took the same interest in treating a 

 chanty patient that he did a wealthy one. Until 

 the writer went with him as secretary, he kept no 



accounts and made no charges. He left the keep- 

 ing of books entirely to his patients, and although 

 he pretended to have a regular price for visits and 

 attendance, he took at settlement whatever the pa- 

 tient chose to pay him." 



Mr. Quimby, according to concurrent testimony, 

 died poor. It was his wish that his son should suc- 

 ceed him in perpetuating the gospel he discovered 

 and proclaimed ; but his son preferred other lines 

 of work than dealing with the sick. One of Mr. 

 Quimby's first patients, the late Julius A. Dresser, 

 of Portland, took up the art of healing for a time. 

 His son, Horatio W. Dresser, a graduate of Har- 

 vard, is now one of the foremost of metaphysical 

 writers. Dr. Evans, author of Primitive Mind 

 Cure and Esoteric Christianity, was one of the next 

 to make themselves heard of in this line of thought. 

 His turn of mind appears to have been more specu- 

 lative than logical. In later years Henry Wood, of 

 Boston, gained world-wide fame. His books have 

 been translated into several languages, and his 

 Ideal Suggestion through Mental Photography is 

 said to have run through several editions oven in 

 the Chinese tongue. Writers of lesser note and 

 varying degrees of merit are numerous. See 

 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE, in this volume. 



Students of the " Transcendental " movement of 

 the New England of sixty years ago may recall 

 that one of the popular names for it was " The 

 Newness '' ; they will also recall the remarkable 

 group of men and women who inspired it. Among 

 these were George Bancroft, F. H. Hedge, Tho- 

 reau, Alcott, Garrison, Theodore Parker, Wen- 

 del Phillips before he gave all his attention to 

 slavery, the Frothinghams, Ripleys, Danas, and, in 

 short, the whole band that afterward tried the 

 Brook Farm experiment. Among the leading 

 women of the movement were Margaret Fuller, 

 Mrs. Bancroft, Lydia Maria Child, Mrs. Emerson. 

 Mrs. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mrs. Phillips, Mrs. 

 Horace Mann, Elizabeth Peabody, Miss Anna 

 Shaw, Miss Caroline Sturgis, Miss Quincy, Mrs. 

 Theodore Parker, Miss Maria White (afterward 

 Mrs. James Russell Lowell), and Miss Lee. Emer- 

 son, of course, was chief of all, but as a looker-on 

 rather than an active participant; he always re- 

 garded the vagaries of the band with an indulgent 

 curiosity. 



The famous Dial, established in 1840, had for 

 its first editor Margaret Fuller, and later Emer- 

 son himself. It had but a short life; its thought 

 shot over the heads of its day, and it died for 

 want of sustenance. Copies of it still exist in 

 libraries, and whoever cai-es to consult it may 

 easily perceive that its aims, though spiritual. 

 are totally unlike the tenets of New Thought 

 as outlined in this article. The older movement 

 proclaimed with equal ardor the spiritual uplifting 

 of the race, but the way to this was sought through 

 physical conditions. All sorts of theories prevailed 

 for the uplifting of soul through the purification 

 of bodily environment and habit. It was really a 

 sublimation of time-approved doctrines and ex- 

 perimental theories regarding food, clothing, social 

 customs, fashions, etc. The tenor of New Thought 

 is the reverse of all this. Every change in the 

 expression of individual life, it declares, must be 

 wrought through spirit. The body itself can ex- 

 press nothing, save only as spirit informs it. 

 Bodily vicissitudes even can not affect the spirit 

 that does not consent to them. It preaches no 

 crusade against custom, or fashion, or any of the 

 so-called good things of life. Every kind of food 

 is wholesome, because it is of God's giving, and 

 none can disagree when spirit controls appetite. 

 Dyspepsia even is a bugaboo only to the one 

 ignorant of spirit law and his own inherent power 



