Page:The Quimby Manuscripts.djvu/289

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DISEASE AND HEALING
285

an effect of this great ocean of mind. The word mind covers all man's reasoning as the word wood covers all vegetable substances. A chair is made of wood but it is an idea made out of wood. In the same way mind is the material, and disease is manufactured out of the material, but the wisdom that forms the idea is called something else. Here you see that mind embraces every part of man but his wisdom and here is the distinction which the world makes only in a different sense. The world calls the parts mind and matter. I call them wisdom and matter. Therefore when I use “mind” I use it as matter containing no intelligence, but it is like sound connected with something to which we attach intelligence.

PARABLE

When sitting by a sick person who had a pain in the left side which I felt and described, I said, you think you have consumption. The patient acknowledged it, saying that her physician had examined her lungs and found the left one very much affected. This she believed and when I told her that her disease was in her mind, it was as much as to say she imagined what was not the case. I told her she did not understand what I meant by the word mind. Then taking up a glass of water I said, suppose you should be told that this water contained a poisonous substance that works in the system and sometimes produces consumption. If you really believe it, every time you drink the idea of poison enters your mind. Presently you begin to hack and cough a little. Would your fears then grow less that the water was poison? I think not. Finally you are given over by your doctor or friends and call on me. I sit down by you and tell you that you are nervous and have been deceived by your doctor and friends. You ask how? You have been told what is false, that the water you drink contains a slow poison, and now your cure hangs on the testimony in the case. If I show that there is no poison in the water then the water did not poison you. What did? It was the doctor's opinion put in the water by your mind. As the mind can receive an impression it can be changed. This change was wrought by the doctor's opinion; so calling mind something it is easy to show that it can be changed by a wisdom superior to an opinion. This wisdom that acts upon the mind is something that never has been described by language, but