but some of them utterly refused to yield to the treatment. Soon after settling in Knoxville I began to question the propriety of calling this treatment “Moral Science” instead of mesmerism. Away from the influence of argument which the teacher of this so-called science knows how to bring to bear upon students with such force as to outweigh any attempts they may make at the time to oppose it, I commenced to think more independently, and to argue with myself as to the truth of the positions we were called upon to take. The result of this course was to convince me that I had studied the science of mesmerism.[1]
Thus was summed up in a phrase the evil which had stalked like a shadow in the wake of Mary Baker’s religious investigation of years. The science of mesmerism, following upon the heels of Divine Science, was dogging and menacing it, threatening to worry and tear to pieces the good that was done. It explained in a word all her long struggle with Quimbyism; it explained the dereliction of those who had been earnest for a time and the interference of her students’ relations which had exhibited peculiarly baleful effects on her teaching. The full significance of hypnotism and mental suggestion did not come to her at once, though with that student’s explanation of his failure a vague outline of the workings of animal magnetism appeared.
The result of this letter was soon evident in Mrs. Glover’s life and affairs. It was not that Wright had abandoned the cause. Wright was bound to go by his very nature; intellectual self-sufficiency
- ↑ Lynn Transcript, January 13, 1872.
