Page:The Quimby Manuscripts.djvu/394

390 Quimby the clue to the spiritual interpretation of Scripture. He also speaks of it as “revelation.”

[It is noticeable that in “Questions and Answers” there is no clear idea of the human self, and that other points obscure in that manuscript are obscure in “Christian Science,” also. On the whole “Questions and Answers” is very obscure. Nor is there to be found anywhere in the earlier writings a clear idea concerning the nature and origin of evil. Hence it would have been easy to make the inference: “all is good, there is no evil,” since Quimby attributes all evil to human opinion or error, and finds no reality in an ultimate sense in human opinions and errors. Later, he is more explicit, and plainly says that goodness is to be attributed to God only, goodness is due to Science, and should be taught to young and old as a Science. It is therefore right to infer that evil is due to our ignorance, to opinion. Had we been taught Science from the beginning, we would have grown up without diseases, without evil; and we would never have mistaken appearances or shadows for reality.

[Dr. Quimby never uses the language of denial. He never explicitly says, “there is no matter,” or “there is no evil.” This is a legitimate back-handed way of declaring what to him was the greatest truth: there is no reality save that which exists in God or Science. His realization of this truth was so strong that he did not need denials. Furthermore, as the foregoing selections make plain, he believed it necessary to explain as well as cure or heal; and to explain was to show precisely in what way shadows had been misinterpreted as substances. His realization for Mrs. Patterson-Eddy gave her the impetus which started her on the way we find her following as indicated by her letters, 1862-64, while she is gradually gaining strength and learning to apply the new “Science.” Her later statements, like those of Rev. Mr. Evans and the other followers of Quimby, are conditioned by her understanding of what Quimby meant. Whether her inferences were right or not, or whether Evans in his “Mental Cure” and “The Divine Law of Cure” was a clearer reasoner, must be left for the reader to determine.]

When we speak of life we speak of it as though it were thing. But there are as many kinds of life as there are