Because I have no power to move them. He said it was not for the want of physical strength, it was for the want of knowledge. I said I knew how to move them but I had not strength. As he wished me to try, I made an effort, but without the slightest effect. He said I acted against myself.
He then went on to explain to me where I even thought wrong, and showed me by explaining till I could see how I was acting against myself. In the course of a short time I could move my legs more than I had for three years. He continued to visit me and I am gaining as fast as a person can. I have been under his treatment for two weeks, and I can get up and sit down very easily. I can see now that my cure depends on my knowledge. Sometimes he asks me if I want some linament to rub on my cords or muscles. I can now see the absurdity of using any application to relax the muscles or to strengthen them. The strength is in the knowledge. This is something that he has the power to impart. But how it is done is impossible to understand. Yet I know the knowledge he imparts to me is strength, and just as I understand so is my cure.[1]
- ↑ This is one of the first endeavors on Quimby's part to take up the point of view of a patient consulting him by showing how strange the new method seemed. It will be noticed that in his letters Quimby does not yet clearly distinguish between the mind, and the nervous activities and disturbed circulation of the blood. He needs an intermediate term to show that thought produces actual changes in the substance of the mind, and then subconsciously in the body. Later he uses the peculiar term “spiritual matter” to cover the activities which lie between, and says less about the changes in the “fluids.” When he apparently identifies the mind with the fluids, in one letter, he is not then teaching materialism, but vaguely arguing for mental causation. The form “mind” is always used in a subordinate sense, with reference to that part of our life which is nearest the body. Dr. Quimby's higher term is “wisdom.” Our wisdom is wholly distinct from the nervous “fluids” and troublesome mental states.
