The next few years were to test her ability to separate her search for truth from the magnetism of a powerful personality. The problem is illustrated by her earliest letter to the Courier, published on November 7, 1862. When this letter was publicly resurrected twenty-five years later, Mrs. Eddy commented that she had been at that time “as ignorant of mesmerism as Eve, before she was taught by the serpent,” and that her head had been “so turned by Animal Magnetism and will-power” under Quimby’s treatment “that I might have written something as hopelessly incorrect” as the letter in question.72
After recounting her dramatic healing—and time was to prove mistaken her hopeful assumption that this was a permanent cure—the letter went on to deny that Quimby’s power was spiritualistic. Quimby was indeed opposed to that popular faith, although his theory of the ability of the spiritual man to condense himself so that he could be seen physically was closer to spiritualism than to orthodox animal magnetism. Then followed a paragraph that expressed all the ardor of her new hopes:
Again, is it by animal magnetism that he heals the sick? Let us examine. I have employed electro magnetism and animal magnetism, and for a brief interval have felt relief from the equilibrium which I fancied was restored to an exhausted system, or by a diffusion of concentrated action; but in no instance did I get rid of a return of all my ailments, and because I had not been helped out of the error in which opinions involved us, my operator believed in disease independent of the mind, hence, I could not be wiser than my teacher. But now I can see dimly at first and only as trees walking, the great principle which underlies Dr. Quimby’s faith and works; and just in proportion to my right perception of truth, is my recovery. This truth which he opposes to the error of giving intelligence to matter and placing pain where it never placed itself, if received understandingly changes the currents of the system to their normal action and the mechanism of the body goes on undisturbed. That this is a science capable of demonstration becomes clear to the minds of those patients who reason upon the ● ● ●
72 Mary Baker G. Eddy, “Mind-Healing History,” The Christian Science Journal, June 1887, p. 110.
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