● ● ● of “Quimby’s own processes and convictions,” and “the very opposite religious preconceptions” held by Mrs. Patterson.136
It is undeniable that the bulk of the Quimby manuscripts in their present form seems clearly to be the work of one vigorous though untrained mentality. Nevertheless there are recurrent elements of spiritual idealism which contradict the author’s basic position. If these do not represent an intermixture of Mrs. Patterson’s own writings, then they may represent the influence of her thinking on him.
When the Quimby manuscripts were finally made available to the public in 1934 by Quimby’s heirs, it was discovered that very few of them were in his own handwriting. Most were copies, or copies of copies, by his widow and son and by the Misses Ware. In the vast majority of cases the originals had been destroyed after the copies were made, so that it is now impossible to know whether any of the originals were in Mrs. Patterson’s handwriting.
It is also impossible to trace with assurance the “progress” of Quimby’s thought, under whatever influence, because of the manifestly questionable accuracy of the dates attached to them. There are not only obvious anachronisms, such as assigning to early 1863 a group of writings which contain two articles on “President Lincoln’s Death” and “Assassination of Lincoln”—hardly to be explained as examples of precognition—but there is also the more significant fact that the articles showing elements of greater spiritual maturity are assigned for the most part to the years 1859–1861, while those allegedly of later date are often cruder, more incoherent, and with more obvious traces of the early mesmeric period.137
In an article on “Aristocracy and Democracy,” said to have been written in 1863, the term “Christian Science,” already used by half a ● ● ●
136 H. A. L. Fisher, Our New Religion: An Examination of Christian Science (New York: Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith, 1930), p. 25.
137 [Horatio W. Dresser, Quimby Manuscripts, p. 431.] Dresser describes the later articles as “not so clear” as the early ones (p. 23). However, he had written in 1906 that the “later writings, never seen by Mrs. Patterson-Eddy, are much clearer on the crucial points.” Horatio W. Dresser, Health and the Inner Life: An Analytical and Historical Study of Spiritual Healing Theories, with an Account of the Life and Teachings of P. P. Quimby (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1906), p. 121. Dresser’s frequent reversals of judgment on such matters as this compound the confusion of the manuscripts themselves.