● ● ● mind transcends matter.” In the development which he called “electrical psychology” he came to see “Infinite Mind” as producing all form through “electrical action,” but he denied the immateriality of mind and spirit.9 “Electricity is matter,” he wrote, “and matter is the medium of God.”10 In one of many striking parallels Quimby was later to write: “Matter is the medium of [God or] Wisdon. . . . Mind is spiritual matter.”11
Dods’ doctrine of disease also had a strong influence on Quimby. The following passage by Dods anticipates Quimby’s later writings:
I have . . . proved that the mind by shrinking back on itself in fear, melancholy, and grief, in the day of adversity . . . can disturb the electro-nervous fluid, and allow it to concentrate itself upon any organ of the body and engender disease. If, then, the mind can disturb the equilibrium of the nervo-electric force and call it to some organ so as to produce disease, then the mind can also disperse it, equalize ● ● ●
9 [ John Bovee Dods, Six Lectures on the Philosophy of Mesmerism (Boston: William A. Hall, 1843), p. 7; Dods, The Philosophy of Electrical Psychology, p. 39.]
↑10 [Publisher’s note: These quotations have not been located in the published writings of Dods, but appear in Alfred Farlow’s unpublished manuscript “Christian Science versus Quimbyism.” “Z–16,” proofing sheet, Alfred Farlow, n.d., Subject File, P. P. Quimby - Farlow Material - “Christian Science vs. Quimbyism,” MBEL.]
↑11 [Horatio W. Dresser, Quimby Manuscripts, p. 244–245.] In her book Philosophy of P. P. Quimby, Annetta G. Dresser quoted Quimby’s Advertiser letter of 1862 as follows: “The subject I had left me, and was employed by ———, who employed him in examining diseases in the mesmeric sleep” (p. 39). The printed letter in the Advertiser (see note 3 above) has the name of John Bovee Dods where Mrs. Dresser left a blank. The reason for her reluctance to draw attention to Dods is suggested by the parallel passages between the two. For instance, Dods writes, “man is an epitome of the universe, and that all the elements, in exact proportions, are most skillfully combined in his system” (Dods, The Philosophy of Electrical Psychology, p. 138). In the Dresser book Quimby is said to have described man as “an epitome of creation, ‘with all the elements of the material world’” (Annetta Gertrude Dresser, Philosophy of P. P. Quimby, p. 77). In the first edition of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy also wrote that “man epitomizes the universe” but went on to say that she had “made the discovery through spiritual sense, that the body of Soul embraces the universe, and that man is the full idea of Life, Substance and Intelligence” (Mary Baker Glover, Science and Health, 1st ed. (Boston: Christian Scientist Publishing Company, 1875), p. 229). Her meaning is made clearer in the last edition of Science and Health where she speaks of man as “including” the universe and writes: “Man is idea, the image, of Love; he is not physique. He is the compound idea of God, including all right ideas” (Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (Boston: Christian Science Board of Directors, 1934), pp. 502, 475).
↑