Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/83

Rh it, his impulse at the bottom was religious. He believed that Christ's mission was largely to the sick; that He and His apostles performed cures in a natural manner; and that he had himself rediscovered their method. Jesus Christ, indeed, was Quimby's great inspiration. He distinguished, however, between the Principle Christ and the Man Jesus. This duality, he said, manifested itself likewise in man.

In every individual, according to Quimby, there were two persons. The first was the Truth, Goodness, and Wisdom into which he had been naturally born. In this condition he was the child of God, the embodiment of Divine Love and Divine Principle. This man had no flesh, no bones, and no blood; he did not breathe, eat, or sleep. He could never sin, never become sick, never die. He knew nothing of matter, or of the physical senses; he was simply Spirit, Wisdom, Principle, Truth, Mind, Science. Quimby, above all, loved to call him the "Scientific Man." This first person was, so to speak, encrusted in another man, formed of matter, sense, and all the accumulated "errors" of time. This man had what Quimby called "Knowledge"—that is, the ideas heaped up by the human mind. According to Quimby, this second man held the first, or truly Scientific man, in bondage. The bonds consisted of false human beliefs. The idea, above all, which held him enthralled, was that of Disease. The man of Science knew nothing of sickness. The man of Ignorance, however, consciously and unconsciously, had been impregnated for centuries with this belief. His whole life, from earliest infancy, was encompassed with suggestions of this kind. Parents constantly suggest illness to their children; doctors preach it twenty-four