Page:The Quimby Manuscripts.djvu/272

268 another. Science does not make peace with the world; it makes war. It seeks not to save the life of error, but to destroy it. It sets ideas at variance with each other, the father against the son. It sets the world of matter in motion, that it may like the earth be prepared to receive a higher cultivation. This has been done in a vast number of cases. But in the things that concern man's health and happiness the world is in Egyptian darkness. This subject never has been sounded. The cause of man's misery and trouble lies in our false reasoning. It always has and it always will be so till man is convinced that his happiness depends on his wisdom, and his misery on his belief. True, he may be happy for a time in believing a lie, but that is like a man finding happiness in taking opium. It stupifies him so he is not sensible of his trouble, but it really increases his misery. Mind like the earth is under the direction of a higher power, which is subject to Wisdom. The world calls it God. To one matter is nothing, to the other it is everything. To science it is an unexplained error. To belief it is a real living substance. I am now speaking of the subject of health. I do not include any true science. But every science not based on the rock I have mentioned must crumble if that rock falls on it, and every idea that is rooted in matter and bears the fruit of misery must be hewn down.

Theories are like trees and ideas can be grafted into them, thereby changing the whole character of the fruit. Jesus engrafted this Truth into the understanding of the people by means of parables. Every one knows that ideas can be sown in the mind like seed in the ground, and that they will grow and bear fruit. The causes of both phenomena are unknown to us, but to the world above matter they are known. To Wisdom these facts are mere ideas, but to matter they are solid truths.

As I have said, everything having a visible form is matter, but there are things into which the world has put life which bring no danger to man, because they contain no knowledge. There are others which contain misery, such as the ideas of disease.

According to the world there is such a disease as small-pox. With God or Wisdom this must be truth or it must be a lie, or belief in a lie. No one will believe that Wisdom can have small-pox. Therefore its foundation must be in this world and it must be confined to the inhabitants of this world. Wisdom