The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy/Appendix B
APPENDIX B
Andrew Jackson Davis was born August 11, 1826, in Blooming Grove, Orange County, N. Y. He grew up in poverty and ignorance, and at seventeen he had received about five months' schooling and had learned to read, write, and do simple sums in arithmetic. He was of average intelligence and had no tastes or ambitions out of the ordinary. In the year 1843, he first heard of animal magnetism, and he was himself magnetised repeatedly by William Levingston, a tailor in Poughkeepsie, where Davis then lived. Davis showed surprising clairvoyant powers while in the magnetic state, and soon he, with Levingston as magnetiser, was using his clairvoyant ability to diagnose cases of sickness and to prescribe remedies. By degrees what he called his "scientific" insight was developed, and soon, his biographer says, "there was no science the general principles and much of minutiæ of which he did not seem to comprehend while in his abnormal state."
On March 7, 1844, Davis fell into a magnetic or "superior" condition without the assistance of the magnetic process, and for two days he was "insensible to external things." He wandered in the Catskill Mountains, and while there he received, "interiorly," information of his future mission.
The following year he went to New York and commenced to lecture, while in the clairvoyant state, Dr. S. S. Lyon of Bridgeport, Conn., acting as his magnetiser. The last of these lectures was delivered on January 25, 1847. The lectures were published in a book entitled, The Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelations, and a Voice to Mankind. Davis continued to lecture, and to write voluminously. His written works consist of thirty-six volumes, nearly all of which, it is claimed, were produced while the author was in a state of clairvoyance. The chief of these are his first books, the Divine Revelations (1847), and The Great Harmonia (1850). In these Davis gives a history of the universe, the formation of the earth, the origin of man, and the gradual development of present civilisation. In his first volume he gives a "Key" to the principles of nature, and relates the "true" version of sacred history, correcting and explaining the Old and New Testaments as he goes along. He gives his interior impressions of the real scheme of the material universe and of the spiritual world, and the relations between the two.
Davis called this "revealed" system "The Harmonial Philosophy," and developed it at length in the six volumes of The Great Harmonia. In many points Davis's philosophy of life and his theory of disease resemble Quimby's, and much of the terminology is the same. (When Davis began to lecture and to write, Quimby had for several years been practising and teaching but, so far as known, Davis had never met Quimby.) For example, Davis states: "There is but one Principle, one united attribute of Goodness and Truth." This he calls the "unchangeable, eternal Positive Mind," which "fills all negative substances. Worlds, their forces, their physical existences, with their life and forces, are all negative to this Positive Mind. This is the great Positive Power." He compares his system to a wheel, the centre of which "is a Focus for the universal diffusion of knowledge, Truth, and the one unchangeable Principle." "Truth," he states, "is positive Principle; error is a negative principle, and as Truth is positive and eternal, it must subdue error, which is only temporal and artificial."
This Positive Mind he also calls Divine Intelligence, the First Cause, etc. He says: "Power, Wisdom, Goodness, Justice, Mercy, Truth, are the gradual developments of an eternal and internal Principle, constituting the Divine, original Essence!"
Disease, in the Davis philosophy, is not a part of the "Great Harmonia." His conclusions as to disease are:
"That disease is discord; and that this disease originates in a want of equilibrium in the circulation of the spiritual Principle throughout the organism.
"That the spiritual Principle is an organisation of refined and sublimated materials; consequently, being material, it is susceptible to material influences.
"That those physical developments which are called diseases, are simply evidences of constitutional or spiritual disturbances; and consequently, that there is but one 'disease,' having innumerable symptoms."
The mission of the physician, Davis says, is not to the body, "for the body is but a subordinate portion of the individual." "Disease is an effect, not a cause." "Disease is an evil to be prevented; it is an effect to be overcome. Physicians are designed to minister to the spiritual principle." "Man is a Unit," he says again. "It is not true that he has a body to be cured of disease separate from his mind."
To dispel disease and to promote individual health and happiness, Davis says, the Divine Principle working through Nature has provided certain remedial agents. These agents are "Dress, Food, Water, Air, Light, Electricity, and Magnetism." "Vital magnetism and electricity," he writes, "are the divine elements of spiritual nourishment, and are the mediums through which the spirit acts upon the body; and to restore harmony or health, the prime-moving principle in the body must be addressed by and through identical mediums or elements."
He also says: "By self-magnetisation, or by the magnetic or spiritual action of the influence of one individual upon another . . . the human soul can rise superior to every species of discord, and thus subdue and expel disease."
Davis believed that Christ employed animal magnetism in making cures. "It is clear, at least to the interiorly-en lightened mind, that Christ cast out diseases, Satans, or devils, by the exercise of that spiritual power, which, in our century, has unfortunately been termed 'Animal Magnetism.' "
In applying his principle practically to the care of the sick, he recommends a cheerful, hopeful spirit on the part of the patient, strict attention to diet and temperature, and regular, simple habits. Occasionally, as for rheumatism, he prescribes a kind of beverage and gives instructions how to prepare it. "The patient is requested to remember," he writes, "that I recommend a reconciliation with Nature, and not medicines, to accomplish his cure."
Like Mrs. Eddy, Davis had not much respect for learning. "Book-learning," he writes, "is mainly ephemeral and useless; but Wisdom which unfolds from out the depths of intuition, is everlasting and more valuable than seas of diamonds." He taught that true wisdom comes only through spiritual or interior vision, and that the evidence of the senses is not always trustworthy.
Some time after the publication of his first books, Davis joined the Spiritualistic movement and became well known as a leader in that sect, travelling and lecturing extensively.