Page:The Quimby Manuscripts.djvu/423

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SCIENCE, LIFE, DEATH
419

jects as poise, composure, serenity, spontaneity, and interior self-control; he does not analyze faith, inward guidance or receptivity.

Yet amidst this apparent narrowness he emphasizes certain characteristics which he believes to be universally verifiable, and it is for the reader to see their scope. Having learned, for example, the power of words or names, when associated with painful sensations and supported by medical authority, he passes to a study of the nature and origin of language; and in lengthy articles which we have not had space for he contrasts truth and error so as to show the difference between language as a human invention and that tongue which the spirit speaks, “the language of sympathy” understood by those who know the meaning of the “still, small voice.” Having seen that the sick are slaves to those who pretend to heal them, he turns to African slavery and discourses at length on the Civil War, then in full progress, taking Lincoln and Jefferson Davis as types of men prominent in the struggle. So too he writes at length concerning aristocracy and democracy, and discovers in all human society the same typical forces which he finds in the inner life. Again, his knowledge of the inner life leads him to write on government, the standard of law, the origin of political parties, and the nature of patriotism. History is to him an enlargement of the conflict taking place within. Society becomes intelligible when we understand the forces operating upon man.

There are but few references to nature as the subject of study of the special sciences, although chemistry and mechanics sometimes figure by way of illustration. Physical substances are usually referred to from the point of view of the effects which people produce upon themselves through adverse suggestion, as in the case of medicines and poisons, or food associated with trouble-making opinion. But this is for the sake of acquainting man with the fact, never adequately recognized till Quimby's time, that because of the dominance of beliefs man is often more influenced by suggestion than by the actual qualities of foods, drugs and poisons. Quimby aims to show that through acceptance of prevalent beliefs man often lives in realms of shadows, subject to his own fancies, literally creating what he believes in. Before we can see things as they are, as God meant them to be, we must learn what it is we think we see. The natural world is beset by appearances. The natural man knows noth-