Appendices

Appendix A: Quimby and New Thought

The system of “New Thought” which emerged in the 1880s is often traced to Quimby as its chief fountainhead. This is probably correct if it is understood to mean Quimby as interpreted by Julius A. Dresser.

Dresser, a young man of some intellectual ability and religious feeling, became acquainted with Quimby in 1860 and a member of the Quimby coterie in the early months of 1862. He brought to the association an intellectual good order which Quimby lacked but an inability to learn how to heal.

As a ready writer entering upon a career as a newspaperman he might have been expected to write a good deal for the press about Quimby, as others already were doing. The interesting fact is that with one possible (and significant) exception he wrote nothing on the subject until 1883, after he had studied with Mrs. Eddy’s student Edward J. Arens, and again in 1887, after he had become better acquainted with her writings.

Because of this, the one possible exception becomes of interest. A letter in the Portland Daily Advertiser on March 22, 1862, entitled “Outline of New Principles in Curing Disease” is signed simply “D.” It is the one writing of that period which brings a degree of order out of the Quimby chaos. It stresses the idealistic rather than the materialistic elements in Quimby’s thought and, except for a reference to the  ● ● ●