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128 explanation was convincing and a complete reconciliation followed. This instance shows the thoroughness with which Quimby searched matters out to the end. He endeavored to give a complete substitute for spiritism by showing how one mind can mislead another.

[Sometimes Quimby declined to take cases of certain types, inasmuch as he was working alone and had the force of public opinion against him. What he says with reference to blindness in a letter to an inquirer in 1861, is significant. He says, “I should not recommend any one like your description to come to see me, for I have no faith that I could cure him. If a man is simply blind I have no chance for a quarrel, for we both agree in that fact. But if a person has any sickness which he wants cured and is partially blind besides, then I might affect his blindness, but that is thrown in. I never undertake to cure the well and if a man is blind and is satisfied I can't find anything to talk about: if I undertake to tell him anything he says, Oh! I am all right but my eyes. So he is spiritually blind and cannot see that his blindness had a beginning. . . I refuse to take such cases till my popularity is such that my opinion is of some force to such persons; for opinions of popular quacks are law and gospel about blindness, and so long as the blind lead the blind they will both fall in the ditch.”

[When asked if he could cure any one using intoxicating liquors, he answered by considering all matters involved. Quimby did not undertake to judge a man simply because he drank. For he wrote, “I judge no man. Judgment belongs to God or Science, and that judges right, for it contains no opinion. Giving an opinion is setting up a standard to judge your neighbor by, and this is not doing as you would be done by.” He goes on to say that if some one under condemnation as a criminal who has taken to drink comes to him, he pleads his case by tracing every factor to the foundation. Convincing the man that he has been misled by his enemies and has taken to drink to “drown his sorrows,” Quimby brings him to his reason, the victim of persecution abandons his old associates, and is ready to change his habits. But, says Quimby, “if he likes smoking or drinking, he is satisfied and wants no physican. If [he is] sick and I find that liquor is his enemy, then it is my duty to tell him so. If I convince