From this last quotation, we can see precisely how Dr. Quimby at once accepted and rejected Spiritualism; and we can see, as well, how he reached the posture of rational idealism. As far as concerned his powers or gifts, the good man was what would now be called a "mesmerist," a "clairvoyant," and a "healing medium"--only he was of so sensitive a spiritual nature that he could exercise these faculties "in his senses," or in what, _to him_, was "a perfectly normal state." If, to his own direct vision and experience, "matter" was "nothing but an idea," to be "seen or not, just as it is called out," his conclusion could only be that "all that is seen by the natural man is mind reduced to a state called matter," and that "there is no matter independent of mind, or life."
But even if granting this posture as a philosophical premise, is it a logical conclusion to insist, with Dr. Quimby, that disease is merely "a belief," and that "health is wisdom?"
"I deny disease as a truth," said he, but "admit it as a deception. Disease is an evil that follows taking an opinion for a truth. Every disease is an invention of man, and has no identity in wisdom.... Disease is the misery of our belief, happiness is the health of our wisdom.... False reasoning is sickness and death.... The devil is the error of mankind.... We are made up of truth and error. Disease is an error, or belief; the Truth is the cure."
It is necessary to explain, however, that Dr. Quimby found the cause of human misery "not alone in the conscious mind" and the "opinions and beliefs about disease," but in the "mental influences and thoughts by which every person is surrounded," and in the "unconscious or subconscious mind." He declared that he could tell "an idea or cause" of sickness from the sensation produced by it, "just as a person knows an orange by the odor." As he "was able to do this," says Mr. Dresser, "he always told the patient, at the first sitting, what the latter thought was his disease, and never allowed the patient to tell him anything about the case."
In a later chapter of our book, the hypothesis that because, in the last analysis "all things are mind," all disease can be cured by mind _while it exists in the body_, will be carefully considered. Meanwhile it must be admitted, without reserve, that under this doctrine, which Dr. Quimby himself believed with all his might, he practised "healing," for many years, with marvelous success.