V
THE PRINCIPLES DISCOVERED
To note how radical was the change through which Mr. Quimby passed as he turned from the mesmeric point of view, we need to revert for the moment to his first experiments. In one of his descriptive articles he tells us that the first time he sat down to try to mesmerise another man he took a chair by him and the two, joining hands with a young man as subject, tried to will the latter to sleep. Their hypothesis was that electricity would pass from their organisms into that of the subject. So by “puffing and willing,” they tried to convey their electricity until at last the subject fell asleep. Having the young man in their power the two men then tried to determine which one had the greater influence.
“So we sat the subject in the chair, the gentleman stood in front of him and I behind him, and the gentleman tried to draw him out of the chair; but he could not start him. Then we reversed positions, and I drew the subject out of the chair This showed that I had the greater power or will. This ended the first experiment.”
Later, Mr. Quimby, experimenting alone, put the subject asleep in five minutes. But as he was new at that sort of thing he did not know what to do next. So procuring books he learned what one is supposed to do. He did not then realize that the results obtained depended upon the theory one adopts and the phenomena one accordingly anticipates. But later he became convinced that acceptance of the theory of magnetism and the mesmeric sleep predisposed his mind to produce the results, and that if had never heard of a book on the subject the results would have been very different. Furthermore, he concluded that however absurd the ideas acquired by the operator, the operator will prove them “true” by his experiments, since, as he tells us, “beliefs make us act, and our acts are directed by our beliefs.” Mr. Quimby had to be credulous in the beginning in order to find out that he had merely proved a belief and was far from truth.
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