Page:The Quimby Manuscripts.djvu/56

52 descriptions amount to nothing, for every one will make the description fit his case. So I said, ‘I don't want that; if there is anything peculiar about the man, describe it.’ ‘Well,’ said he, ‘there is one thing. He has a hair lip.’ I asked the question so that if there was anything peculiar the audience would create it.”

What was the explanation of such an experiment? Mr. Quimby concluded that those in the audience who were predisposed to believe in spirits would infer that Lucius actually brought the man's spirit there. The proof was found in the fact that Lucius accurately described the man's peculiar appearance. But those who believed in thought-reading would conclude that Lucius had read from the minds of the audience his description of the man's appearance, and that the rest of the experiment was to be explained on the basis of clairvoyance. Once in touch with the personality of the man in question, as known by people present, Lucius could have read the rest, or discerned the mental pictures successively appearing as Lucius gained point after point essential to the description. Mr. Quimby's conclusion was that the mental image of the man was as real to Lucius as though the man himself or his spirit had been present. He became the more convinced that “man has the power to create ideas and make them so dense that they can be seen by a subject who is mesmerised.” If an imagined person, or the mere memory image of a person was as real to the subject as an actual “spirit,” why should one infer that a spirit was there?

Thus Mr. Quimby was led more and more steadily to the conclusion that all effects produced on Lucius were due to the direct action of mind on mind, and that no other hypothesis was necessary. He found that he could influence Lucius either with or without Lucius's knowledge, and that Lucius was also affected in respects which were not intentional on his part. Again, he found himself able to give a thought to another's mind without mesmerism, for instance, by bidding a person stop when walking. Why, then, should he use either mesmerism or his subject? Why not follow out this discovery that ideas take shape in the mind, according to one's belief, and can be seen by the eye of the spirit? If one mind can influence another by creating a mental picture of an object to be feared, such as a wild animal, why may we not create good objects and benefit the minds of those we seek to