Page:The Quimby Manuscripts.djvu/192

188 the mind is the medium of them both, like the telegraph-wire a medium of truth and error. Love is a substance like food that comes from heaven to feed the soul. Error is matter, and contains reason and all the faculties. Love is the true answer to our desire; in our desire is our hope, and when we get that which we hope for, it contains nothing but true knowledge or love, no sorrow, nor pain, nor grief, nor shame, nor fear.—Dec. 1859.

The question is often asked, if I am a spiritualist. My answer is that I am not, after the manner of the Rochester rappings, but I am a believer in the spirits of the living. Here seems to be a difference of opinion. The common opinion of the people in regard to the dead I have no sympathy with, from the fact that their belief is founded on an opinion which I know is false; yet I believe them honest but misled for the want of some better explanation of the phenomenon. We see men, women, and children walking around, by and by they pass away from us, and their bodies are laid in the earth. We look on the scene and pause. A cold icy sensation passes through our frame. We weep from our ignorance. We have seen the matter in a form moving about as though it contained life. Now it lies, cold and clammy, and our hope is cut off. Perhaps it is a son or daughter, in whom we have had hopes, raised to the highest extreme, of seeing them stand before the world, loved and respected for their worth, now gone forever. Doubts and fears take possession of our minds. We want to believe that they will know us, and in this state of mind, we often ask this lump of clay if it does know us, but no answer returns, we weep and repeat the question. No answer comes, and in a convulsive state of mind we leave and retire to some lonely spot to pour out our grief. Some kind friend tries to console us by telling us that our friend is not dead, but still lives; by talking what they have no knowledge of, only a desire that it may be so.

Their sympathy and ignorance mingle in a belief, and we try to believe it. This is the state of the people in regard to the dead. Their belief arises from the necessity of the case, but it keeps them in ignorance of themselves, and all their life subject to bondage.

Now where do I differ from all this belief? In every