was significant. It established the fact that clairvoyance was possible without the aid of spirits; and, when Quimby found that he possessed the same powers, it established the fact that this clear-seeing is possible without mesmeric sleep. What was needed, therefore, was a higher, genuinely spiritual psychology. We find Quimby in his articles endeavoring to express that psychology, always greatly hampered by language and the fact that he had no co-workers save those who helped him to express his ideas.
But if the facts of spiritual perception gave the basis in part for a higher view of the human spirit, there was still another principle to be achieved, that is, the adding of the idea of “the Christ” as common to the works of healing of Gospel times and to those of the new day. There are no references to this idea in the earlier newspaper articles which have been preserved or in the earliest letters to patients. But when we turn to later letters and to the first articles written in the Portland period, in 1859 and early in 1860, we find this idea in full recognition as an essential part of the teaching then given. This shows that if it passed through a period of gradual development, that development must have been begun long before; since this view is not brought forward tentatively but with habitual conviction.
On the other hand, we do find references in letters from patients to Quimby's “Science,” written with a capital “S.” This would indicate that in conversation with patients Dr. Quimby was in the habit of talking about his “Science of Health” long before he put this view in writing and identified it with the Christ. What we must presuppose, in order to have a complete view of his intermediate period up to October, 1859, is an insight which brought the principles under consideration into a single view, namely, the conception of the human spirit with its higher “senses,” the idea of the Divine presence as guiding wisdom and healing power, and the identification of this wisdom with the Christ in terms of a demonstrable Science which all might understand.
We are not to suppose that Dr. Quimby quickly transferred his exceptional powers of control as formerly exercised over Lucius into immediate command of his forces so that he was never ill, never had any disabilities to overcome. For the transition began with the realization that he could readily take upon himself the feelings of patients, and that a way
