Page:The Quimby Manuscripts.djvu/199

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CHRIST OR SCIENCE
195

governed by the evidence. A sick man is like a criminal cast into prison, for disobeying some law that man has set up, I plead his case, and if I get the verdict, the criminal is set at liberty. If I fail, I lose the case. His own judgment is his judge, his feelings are his evidence. If my explanation is satisfactory to the judge, you will give me the verdict. This ends the trial, and the patient is released.—Dec. 1859.

ESTABLISHING A NEW SCIENCE

What has a man to contend with who undertakes to establish a new science? He has the opposition of all the opinions of the world in regard to it, and all their influence. He will be misunderstood by fools, and misrepresented by knaves, for [his science] will tear down their fortress or belief, and they will use all their skill and deception to defeat their enemy. Their weapon is their tongue, and the tongue of a hypocrite is of all weapons the most deadly to truth; for it can assume the form of an angel, while it is sapping your very life's blood from your soul. Its life and happiness are its own torment. Ever since the world began, Science has had this enemy to contend with, and some very hard battles have been fought before error would leave the field. Even when forced to retreat into darkness it would come out. . . . Therefore, science must keep awake for its own safety. These two powers are in every person, and each one's happiness or misery shows which one he is under subjection to. If well and happy, it is no proof that he has been through this war of science and arrived at the truth, but that from some cause, he is satisfied to become the friend of both powers. In this way he is a kind of know-nothing; but his position is not safe, for his enemy knows his position, and only lets him remain while he will keep still or quiet.

What has Truth accomplished? A great deal. It has planted its standard in this battlefield. The standard of mathematics waves its banner to the truth. These monuments of Science, like Solomon's Temple, are the place where truth comes to worship, and the true priests are those who can teach these sciences understandingly, and the masses are those whose belief is founded on these teachers' opinions, without knowing the Science or Truth, hut whose faith is pinned on another's opinion or sleeves. This credulity of the