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310 and all the variations of humanity. . . . It is not matter that comes to our bodily senses. It is another kind which is just as sensible to him as that which he touches with his hands. Around every one is an atmosphere of intelligence which contains our whole identity, and he has become so sensitive to that atmosphere that its existence is a fact, and with that he operates. [If this seems to imply a sixth sense, the answer is that Dr. Quimby has not] found any one faculty that would answer to a “sense,” but he has refined and spiritualized those faculties which mankind exercise toward each other till he has arrived at the true way of communicating with and influencing minds. For instance, his sympathy for his patients is pure from any feeling like blame or contempt, or discouragement, and is a transparency to reflect their feelings just as they come to him, with light from a higher source, to account for and explain them to the patient, and his explanation illumines the patient's mind.

How does he know he has got hold of a true method? How does he know he is not mistaken? There are many reasons which confirm his method as a science. One is that he constantly improves it. He finds he can cure more quickly, and harder cases. Then as he explains his method to others and they understand it confirms him. . . . Admitting that there is a First Cause or God, it is not so hard to demonstrate that Dr. Quimby knows more about His wisdom in regard to health. . . and unto Him he gives all the glory. He knows that while treating disease he is purely under the influence of the highest truth. . . . He knows that his peculiar belief is not an invention of his own, for it is contrary to what as a natural man he has been taught: it rests on the facts of his own experience with the sick. ..

Disease is that part of the mind that can be compared to a wilderness. It is full of erroneous opinions and false ideas of all kinds, and it opens a field for speculators to explore. . . . When I sit by a sick person he tells me the story of his travels, and his experience of the evils that beset him in this wilderness. The scientific character is like the prodigal son, it desires to enter this land of mystery to see what it can gain. . . . As health is the thing most desired, to find out how to keep it and when lost how to restore it, is the object of our journey into this territory.