A History of the New Thought Movement

Mrs. Eddy also tended to introduce speculative terms to some extent, based on a version of Berkeley, with whom she believed herself in agreement. But as in the case of Mr. Evans’s later version of the spiritual healing theory, an analysis of the differences would take us too far afield. I have elsewhere examined this view of Berkeley.39 We note this view in order to show why on the whole readers of Science and Health have tended to make light of the natural world. There may have been an advantage in favor of this sort of idealism for those who were working away from a purely naturalistic point of view. As an extreme reaction against a materialistic age, Christian Science may have had a lesson for us. But our thought need not rest in extremes. It is not necessary to deny any of the realities, laws or conditions of the natural world in order to test the truths of mental healing. There is no advantage in denying anything that God has made.

Mrs. Eddy’s hypothesis of “malicious animal magnetism” was a departure from Quimby’s teaching; for Quimby did not charge his critics with any effort to work against him, he was not concerned with the “malicious.” This hypothesis seems rather strange, in view of the fact that Mrs. Eddy had declared that “All is good; there is no evil.” It came into vogue in Christian Science circles in connection with some of the early students, some of whom were charged with appropriating Mrs. Eddy’s ideas. Quimby had taught that minds influence one another far more than we realize, and that minds give off an “atmosphere”; but he had nothing to say about “magnetism” since he traced all the adverse influences to which the sick are subject to fear, error, and opinions or beliefs. When Mrs. Eddy explains evil as an illusion due to the errors of “mortal mind,” to the ignorance of our true nature, Quimby would have pointed out that in all consistency one should cleave to this our real nature, to the truth of our real being, not concerning ourselves with so-called “animal magnetism.” Quimby would have said that “Good or God never causes evil, or creates aught that can cause evil”; for he held that man’s misery is of man’s own invention, and should not be attributed to God.

When Mrs. Eddy declares that Christ was “the divine manifestation of God, which comes in the flesh, to destroy incarnate error,” and that Jesus was “the human man and Christ is divine,” she is drawing the same distinction which runs through Quimby’s teaching. Quimby also said that “man is God’s idea,” “the spiritual image and likeness of God,” and he too taught that man in this sense of the word does not sin, is not sick, since sin or sickness is explicable by reference to the opinions or beliefs which man entertains in his ignorance. Mrs. Eddy gives further expression to this principle when she says, “The realm of the real is spiritual.” “The spiritual universe, including man, is a compound yet individual idea, reflecting the divine Substance of Spirit,” “Spirit is God, and man is the image and likeness; hence man is spiritual and not material.”

When, however, Mrs. Eddy declares that “there is no matter, it is non- existent,” “matter is another name for mortal mind,” “the body is in fact mortal mind, though it is called matter,” she is only partly stating Quimby’s view. Quimby called the lower mind “spiritual matter,” and he held that man entertains all sorts of opinions concerning the body as if matter contained intelligence; but he did not deny the existence of the body, which is part of nature and which we might all truly understand if we would take our start with the “scientific man,” the “spiritual man,” or real self. Mrs. Eddy’s statement, “Mortal mind is not an entity. It is only a false sense of matter,” comes nearer Quimby’s terminology. It was this “false sense of matter” which Quimby sought to dispel by establishing the truth concerning man’s being. Mrs. Eddy speaks of the flesh as “An error of physical belief, a supposition that life, substance and intelligence are in matter…a belief that matter has sensation.” She is here drawing the same distinction, save that Quimby would have called attention to the fact that there is a true idea of the flesh: man did not create the body, but has entertained a false idea of it by attributing to it the intelligence which belongs only to mind. The curative principle is stated by Mrs. Eddy when she says that “the healing power of Truth is demonstrated to be an immanent, eternal quality, or principle,” the term “Principle” having been substituted for Quimby’s term “Wisdom.” What Mrs.

Eddy aimed to express no doubt was the supremacy of spirit over material circumstance, hence over all errors, opinions and beliefs. To see this truth and express it in one’s own fashion is to adopt the affirmative attitude, and that was Quimby’s aim in establishing “the science of life and happiness,” or “Christian Science.”