Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/84

54 hours a day; the clergy, the newspapers, books, ordinary conversation,—the whole modern world, thought Quimby, had engaged in a huge conspiracy to familiarise the human mind with this false concept. This process had been going on for thousands of years, until finally unhealthy ideas had triumphed over healthy; beliefs had got the upper hand of truth; knowledge had supplanted wisdom; ignorance had taken the place of science; matter had superseded mind; Jesus had dethroned Christ.

Quimby regarded his mission in the world as the reëstablishment of the original and natural harmony. Though his philosophy embraces the whole of life, he used all his energies in eradicating one of man's many false "beliefs," or "errors,"—that of Disease. His method was simplicity itself. The medical profession constantly harped on the idea of sickness; Quimby constantly harped on the idea of health. The doctor told the patient that disease was inevitable, man's natural inheritance; Quimby told him that disease was merely an "error," that it was created, "not by God, but by man," and that health was the true and scientific state. "The idea that a beneficent God had anything to do with disease," said Quimby, "is superstition." "Disease," reads another of his manuscripts, "is false reasoning. True scientific wisdom is health and happiness. False reasoning is sickness and death." Again he says: "This is my theory: to put man in possession of a science that will destroy the ideas of the sick, and teach man one living profession of his own identity, with life free from error and disease. As man passes through these combinations, they differ one from another. . . . He is dying and living all the time to