The Quimby manuscripts

Phineas Parkhurst Quimby

• Publisher: Youcanprint
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9788831624992
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Self Improvement

Quimby is known as the founder of "New Thought". This series of documents, published in 1921 in response to a campaign to question its early role in Christian science, shows that Quimby has anticipated many of the key ideas of both movements.

THE QUIMBY MANUSCRIPTS

by

PHINEAS PARKHURST QUIMBY

First digital edition 2019 by Gianluca Ruffini

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

The book as a whole contains an adequate statement of Quimby’s original theory as found in his manuscripts, 1846-65. The volume also contains the writings, hitherto inaccessible, which Mrs. Eddy borrowed during her stay in Portland as Quimby’s patient. The editor is a son of Mrs. Julius A. Dresser, who was the most active of Quimby’s followers at the time Mrs. Eddy was under treatment and who loaned Mrs. Eddy the copybooks which made her acquainted with the Quimby manuscripts.

EDITOR’S PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

FOR many years a mass of documents of interest to Christian Scientists and to their critics as well, has been withheld from publication, although earnestly sought. These documents were written by Dr. P. P. Quimby, of Portland, Maine, and contain his views regarding mental and spiritual healing. They became familiar to Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy when she visited Dr. Quimby as a patient, and it has been charged by her critics that many of the ideas later promulgated in her teachings were born of the Quimby theories.

In order to set this controversy at rest, many attempts have been made to gain access to the Quimby manuscripts, but heretofore without success except in piecemeal or disjointed form. The present editor, however, has been fortunate in securing from Mrs. George A. Quimby, owner of the manuscripts, permission to print the documents in full. Many of them now see the light of the printed page for the first time. Others give a full and authentic version of material from which only short extracts have previously appeared.

The editor’s point of view is that of the expositor, never critical save as the author of the manuscripts might have criticized his own work. All subject-matter in brackets is by the editor, also all footnotes. Italics and quotation-marks have been introduced to a slight extent.

Scriptural quotations have not been corrected, because Dr. Quimby was in the habit of paraphrasing in order to show how he interpreted the Bible. Some of the articles have been condensed to avoid repetition, but no material changes have been made. The terms Science, Truth, Wisdom, have been capitalized throughout in conformity with the usage in some of the articles in which these words are synonyms for Christ, or God.

The same is true of the general terms for Quimby’s theory, the Science of Health, the Science of Life and Happiness. The term Christian Science is used with reference to the growth of the original teaching of Jesus.

In this edition, several errors have been corrected and Chapter twelve has been re-written. H. H. W. DRESSER

- 1. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

WHEN a man of ability and influence in the world has been misrepresented, a golden opportunity is put before us. Once in touch with his spirit, we may have the good fortune to catch his vision, see the marvels he might have achieved had he lived until our day, his genius recognized, his truth made our own. It will not then be necessary to devote much time to the controversies which have grown up around his name.

Such an opportunity is put before the truth-loving world in the case of Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, gone from among us since January 16, 1866. He was not great as some account greatness. We need not praise him to do him justice. But he loved his fellowmen, lived and labored, and laid down his life for them. He was a very genuine lover of truth, and faithfully stood for a great truth of surpassing value for humanity. Whoever does this is worthy of our endeavors to put his work in its real light. Because he was persistently misrepresented, the world demands to know the full truth about him, and in knowing it may come into surer possession of his gift to humanity.

Because Dr. Quimby, as he was called by his patients and friends, has been put in a false light for many years, he is given opportunity to speak for himself, in his own words, from his letters, manuscripts and other documents, preserved precisely as he left them. Time has kept for our purposes everything needed to make the record complete.

Quimby’s writings were not meant for publication, although their author hoped to revise them for a hook, and he had already written experimental introductions. The lapse of time has brought many changes of thought, hence notes and explanations are necessary. The therapeutic movement which grew out of Quimby’s pioneer work has also undergone changes. Time has shown that the original teachings have come to possess a value which might not have been theirs had they been published fifty years ago. Now that the teachings are given to the world, many new estimates will be made. The majority of us are little accustomed to thinking in terms of inner experience without the embellishments of literary art or the interpretations of sects and schools; and some effort will be required to take up the point of view of a writer who wrote precisely as he thought.

There is little to add to the biographical sketch published by his son George A. Quimby, in the New England Magazine, March, 1888, so far as external details are concerned. Quimby was born in Lebanon, New Hampshire, February 16, 1802. When two years of age his home was moved to Belfast, Maine, where he spent his boyhood days without noteworthy incident. The family home remained in Belfast. There Quimby began his first investigations in mental phenomena. Thither he went for rest and change in the years of his greatest activities as spiritual healer in Portland, and there his earthly life came to an end, after more than twenty years devoted to the type of work which gives him title to fame among original minds.

His education in the schools was so meagre that he did not learn to spell and punctuate as most writers do. But when he misspelled he did so uniformly, and his phonetic spellings are convenient means of identification in his manuscripts. The same is true of his peculiar use of words. In one of his papers he says, with reference to his education, that if he has learning enough to convey his ideas to the world that will suffice. Had he been granted the opportunity as a young man, he would naturally have sought the best training in the special sciences, as that was the tendency of his mind. But there are other sorts of education which some of us value more. If to be educated is to have power to quicken in men and women knowledge of themselves, love for spiritual truth and love for God, then indeed he was educated in high degree. The significant fact is that with only a common-school education, and with but slight acquaintance with the ages of human thought, Quimby made the best use of his powers and grappled with the greatest problems with clear insight. To see why he came to believe as he did is to pass far beyond the external facts of his biography, and turn to his inner life with its outreachings.

Quimby early manifested ability as an inventor, but his mechanical interests do not explain him. So, too, in his occupation as watch and clockmaker there is no hint of his peculiar ability in discerning the human heart. His power as inventor was limited by his interest in mechanics. Before the period of his experiments in mental phenomena there is only one incident of any significance recorded, the recovery of his health in part without the aid of medicine; but even in this case his meagre account fails to tell us whether the change was in any sense permanent. It was not until his investigations were well begun that he wholly regained his health and began to see that health is a spiritual possession. But in reviewing this introductory period of his life everything once more depends on what we call education. Inventive or creative ability, combined with love for facts, the facts and laws of the special sciences, is a splendid beginning if one is to devote maturer years to establishing a spiritual science. Perhaps it was Quimby’s love for natural facts which kept him from ignoring the existence and reality of the natural world, when he became absorbed in the study of the mind.

Quimby’s mind was scientific in the good sense of the term. He did not stop many years in the domain of mechanics. He was not content with letters patent as signs of his ability. Nor was he satisfied with studies in mesmerism, spiritism and kindred phenomena. The impressive fact is that he continued his researches until he laid the basis for a new structure in the world of thought. During the period of his preliminary investigations he read books on the sciences to some extent. But with the beginning of his life-work he branched out in a new direction, working entirely alone, amidst opposition and with no books to help him. His more productive years should therefore be judged by his high ideal of a spiritual science.

His great love for truth, his desire to prove all things for himself, is then the most prominent characteristic of his early manhood. Apparently, those who knew him well in the early years of his life in Belfast saw nothing peculiar or exceptional in him. Hence there is nothing recorded that gives us any clue until, putting aside conventional standards of thought, we seek the man’s inner type, the sources of his insight in the Divine purpose. Yet there is an advantage in being known by one’s fellow townsmen as honest, upright, dedicated to practical pursuits, and by no means peculiar. For when Quimby took up a study that was unpopular, he was a prophet with honor in his own country. From his home town, he went forth to engage in public experiments, well recommended. And in his own town he began the practice of spiritual healing, winning there the reputation which led him to move to Portland, in 1859, and enlarge his work.

Was he a religious man? In one of his articles he says, “I have been trying all my life, ever since I was old enough to listen, to understand the religious opinions of the world, and see if people understand what they profess to believe.” Not finding spiritual wisdom, he was inclined to be sceptical, and later spent much time setting his patients free from religious beliefs. George Quimby tells us emphatically that his father was not religious in the sense in which one might understand the term religion as applied to organizations, churches and authorized text-books. We shall see reasons for this distinction as we proceed. But if to believe profoundly in the indwelling presence of God as love and wisdom, if to live by this Presence so as to realize its reality vividly in the practice of spiritual healing, is to be religious, then indeed few men have been more truly religious than he. Those of us who have known his chief followers have felt from them a spiritual impetus coming from his work which surpasses what we have elsewhere met in actual practice.

After he ceased to experiment with mesmerism, and began to study the sick intuitively, he took his starting-point in religious matters from the state in which he found his patients. He found many of them victims of what we now call the old theology. The priests and ministers of that theology were to him blind guides. Hence, as he tells us, he made war on all religious opinions and on all priestcraft. Jesus was to him a reformer who had overcome all his religion before beginning to establish “the Truth or Christ.” Quimby was very radical in opposing doctrinal conceptions of Christ. He uniformly called Jesus “a man like ourselves,” that he might win for the Master new recognition as the founder of spiritual science. To him “the Science of the Christ” was greater than a religion.

Did he allow his own personality to become a centre of interest and admiration? Not at all. He realized of course that his patients would look up to him as to any physician who had restored them to health when there was apparently no hope. So, he sometimes freely spoke of his “power or influence.” But this was to divert attention from doctors and medicines. He then disclosed the way to his great truth, and kept his “science” steadily before his patient’s mind. His manuscripts contain scarcely a reference to himself save to show what he learned from early investigations, why lie is not a spiritualist, humbug or quack, and why he believed man possesses “spiritual senses” in touch with Divine wisdom. Thus he often speaks of himself in the third person as “P. P. Q.” not “the natural man,” but the one who has seen a great truth which all might understand.

In his constructive period in Portland, Quimby had around him, not ardent disciples who compared him with the great philosophers or with Jesus, but a small group who defended him against misrepresentation, and regarded him as he wished to be regarded, as a lover of truth. His patients became his special friends, and it was to those most interested that he gave forth his ideas most freely. The Misses Ware, who did most of the copying of the manuscripts and made changes in them according to his suggestions when he heard them read, were especially fitted for this service, since they brought forward no opinions of their own and were devoted to this part of the work. So, too, Mr. Julius A. Dresser, who spent his time after his own recovery, in June, 1860, conversing with new patients and inquirers, explaining Quimby’s theory and methods, was particularly adapted to aid the great cause to which his life was dedicated. A few followers wrote brief articles for the press, but none had the confidence to undertake any elaborate exposition, hoping as they did that the manuscripts would soon be given to the world and that these would disclose the new truth in its fulness.

It has been supposed that Quimby did no teaching, and this is true so far as organized instruction is concerned. But he did the same kind of teaching that all original men engage in, he conversed with his followers, speaking out of the fulness of experience and with the force of native insight. Thus, he began the educational part of his treatment as soon as his patients were in a state of mind to listen responsively. Then he explained his “Truth” more at length as responsiveness grew and interest was awakened. Coming out of his office filled with insights from his latest sitting, he would share his views with interested groups. Sometimes, too, his essays would be read and the contents discussed. His writings were loaned to patients and followers who were especially interested, and after February, 1862, copies of his “Questions and Answers” were kept in circulation among patients. The Misses Ware and Mr. Dresser had freer access to the writings and were in a position to make supplementary explanations. In a way, this is the best sort of instruction in the world, this teaching by the conversational method when the works and evidences in question are immediately accessible to those interested to follow the implied principles and learn all they can.

This was the way in which the author of “Science and Health” received her instruction. Mrs. Eddy, then Mrs. Patterson, had the full benefit of these exceptional opportunities. Soon after she had sufficiently recovered from her invalidism to give attention to the principles of which she had witnessed such an impressive demonstration in her own case, she manifested great interest in the new truths. Mr. Dresser, who understood Quimby’s ideas and methods particularly well, talked at length with her, and later loaned her Vol. I of the manuscripts, printed in Chap. XIV. We learn from George Quimby who, as his father’s secretary, was always present, that she talked at length with Dr. Quimby, in his office, at the close of the silent sittings. She was present in the groups of interested listeners above referred to. She heard essays read and discussed. Submitting some of her first attempts at expressing the new ideas in her own way, she also had the benefit of Dr. Quimby’s criticism. Then too she had opportunity to copy “Questions and Answers,” on which she was later to base her teachings. We have direct testimony on all these points from those in regular association with Dr. Quimby, and from those who knew Mrs. Eddy when she was noting down remembered sayings and modifying manuscripts preparatory to teaching. Here, in brief, was the origin of Mrs. Eddy’s type of Christian Science as she later gave it forth in successive editions of “Science and Health.” Her indebtedness was that of the student to the teacher with an original mind. Our interest is to note Quimby’s power of quickening such responsiveness by sharing his insights, contributing his peculiar terms, and explaining his methods.

The only member of the little group not formerly a patient was Quimby’s son, George. Dr. Quimby hoped that his son would devote himself to “the Truth,” for George had exceptional opportunities as his father’s secretary during the Portland period to see the fruits of the new Science. Fortunately for us, George had an exceptional memory for all important details, he was conscientious to the limit in preserving the manuscripts until the time should come to fulfil all conditions and publish them, and his keen sense of humor was oftentimes the saving grace of the long-drawn-out controversy which began in 1883. He had as intimate knowledge of his father’s teachings and methods as one could have who had not himself demonstrated them by healing or being healed, or by teaching. His correspondence with inquirers discloses little interest in the spiritual side of his father’s teachings, and so he dwells rather on the mental theory of the origin of disease and its cure. But he well knew that what he calls the “religious” part of Mrs. Eddy’s book and church were her own, not his father’s, as greatly indebted as she was for the ideas and methods without which her work could never have come to be.

Quimby’s followers were remarkably free from; hero-worship. Hence, they did not put down wise sayings to any extent, did not make note of impressive incidents, and have not handed down material for the elaborate biography which some have hoped the editor of this book would write. All this is in perfect keeping with the truth which Quimby taught. It is disappointing to those who care little except for human anecdotes. It is taken as a matter of course by those who love truth above its prophets.

His patients tell us that Quimby had remarkable insight into the character of the sick. He judged character, not by external signs, not t...

Table of contents

• PUBLISHER’S NOTE
• - 4. THE MESMERIC PERIOD
• - 10. LETTERS TO PATIENTS
• - 13. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
• - 15. THE WORLD OF THE SENSES
• - 16. DISEASE AND HEALING
• - 19. SCIENCE, LIFE, DEATH