One Simple Idea

by Mitch Horowitz

  A great deal has been written about Quimby in surveys of American religion and psychology, much of it drawn from the early work of Dresser and George Quimby; as covered elsewhere in these notes and in footnotes in the narrative, I have, wherever possible, corroborated early biographical information with period newspaper coverage and studies of the mental-healing and New Thought cultures, including the volumes Spirits in Rebellion: The Rise and Development of New Thought by Charles Braden (Southern Methodist University Press, 1963, 1987); Each Mind a Kingdom: American Women, Sexual Purity, and the New Thought Movement, 1875–1920 by Beryl Satter (University of California Press, 1999); History and Philosophy of Metaphysical Movements in America by J. Stillson Judah (Westminster Press, 1967); and Hickey’s above-referenced 2008 Duke dissertation. Also helpful are Robert Peel’s seminal study, Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Trial (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971), and Mind Cure in New England: From the Civil War to World War I by Gail Thain Parker (University Press of New England, 1973). An important adjunct to these works is Donald Meyer’s The Positive Thinkers (Wesleyan University Press, 1965, 1980, 1988), which provides a rigorous historical overview of the movement from a dissenting and critical perspective. For a thoughtful contemporary critique see Oliver Burkeman’s The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking (Faber & Faber, 2012).

  The literature on Mesmerism is vast. The most valuable volumes in assembling this account were The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry by Henri F. Ellenberger (Basic Books, 1970); From Mesmer to Freud: Magnetic Sleep and the Roots of Psychoanalytic Healing by Adam Crabtree (Yale University Press, 1993); Abnormal Hypnotic Phenomena, vols. 1–4, edited by Eric J. Dingwall (J. & A. Churchill/ Barnes & Noble, 1968); A History of Hypnotism by Alan Gauld (Cambridge University Press, 1992); The Covert Enlightenment: Eighteenth-Century Counterculture and Its Aftermath by Alfred J. Gabay (Swedenborg Foundation Publishers, 2005); Franz Anton Mesmer: A History of Mesmerism by Margaret Goldsmith (Doubleday, 1934); Franz Anton Mesmer: Between God and the Devil by James Wyckoff (Prentice-Hall, 1975); and The Wizard from Vienna: Franz Anton Mesmer by Vincent Buranelli (Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1975).

  Mesmer himself wrote relatively little. His native language was German, and his public writings were in French and, less often, in Latin. A rare and valuable collection of Mesmer’s written work is Mesmerism: A Translation of the Original Scientific and Medical Writings of F. A. Mesmer translated and compiled by George Bloch, Ph.D., introduced by E. R. Hilgard, Ph.D. (Walter Kaufman, 1980). Where I quote Mesmer, I used the Bloch collection, Ellenberger (1970), and Goldsmith (1934).

  On the Franklin report, I have benefited from “Mesmerism and Revolutionary America” by Helmut Hirsch, American-German Review, October 1943, and Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France by Robert Darnton (Harvard University Press, 1968), which has valuable details on political attitudes toward Mesmerism. Also helpful were Anne Harrington’s The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine (Norton, 2008), and a translation of the commission’s report by Charles and Danielle Salas published with an introduction by Michael Shermer as “Testing the Claims of Mesmer” in Skeptic Magazine, vol. 4, no. 3 (1996). Puységur’s credo (“I believe in the existence within myself”) is from Ellenberger (1970). Sources on the decline of Mesmerism in Europe include Darnton (1968), Gauld (1992), Ellenberger (1970), and Dingwall (1968).

  On the careers of Charles Poyen and Robert J. Collyer, I am indebted to exchanges with historian Keith McNeil, who provided citations and transcriptions of the Belfast (ME) Republican Journal articles noted in the chapter. Where Poyen is quoted, it is from his memoir, Progress of Animal Magnetism in New England (Weeks, Jordan & Co., 1837). Sources on Poyen’s life include “Charles Poyen Brings Mesmerism to America” by Eric R. Carlson, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, vol. 15, 1960; “How Southern New England Became Magnetic North” by Sheila O’Brien Quinn, History of Psychology, August 2007; and The Heyday of Spiritualism by Slater Brown (Hawthorn Books, 1970). The reference to Poyen being mistaken for an ex-slave is from The Mad Forties by Grace Adams and Edward Hutter (Harper & Brothers, 1942). On Robert H. Collyer’s life I benefited from his book Psychography (Redding & Co., 1843), his memoir, Lights and Shadows of American Life (Brainard & Co., 1838, 1843), Dingwall (1968), and Gauld (1992).

  The dates that Quimby encountered Poyen and Collyer can be elusive. Varying accounts, often published many years after the events in question, place Quimby at Mesmerist demonstrations in Maine in the years 1836 and 1838. It is well established that Charles Poyen made a presentation in Bangor in 1836, and Quimby, writing in his notes, places himself there. Less clear are references to an 1838 demonstration. Quimby’s son and executor, George, writing in a biographical article about his father in the New England Magazine in 1888, placed Quimby at a Belfast demonstration “about the year 1838”—a date that historians frequently repeat. This may have resulted from a slip in George’s memory (he was writing around fifty years after the fact). The next publicly noted demonstration of Mesmerism in Maine occurred in fall 1841, when the Belfast Republican Journal recorded visits from Robert H. Collyer in both September and October. Collyer also cited 1841 as the year he began his presentations. Quimby’s notes recollect his seeing both Poyen and Collyer. Hence, Quimby witnessed the demonstrations of each man, respectively, in 1836 and 1841. The 1838 date, though widely repeated, appears in no public record.

  No precise records show when Quimby and Lucius Burkmar started working together, but the intrepid researchers Ervin Seale and his collaborator Erroll Stafford Collie, in Phineas Parkhurst Quimby: The Complete Writings, vol. 1 (1988), turned up letters of introduction that show the two men traveling together by early November 1843. Horatio Dresser in The Quimby Manuscripts (1921) reprints an article from the Bangor Democrat (ME) in April 1843, that shows Quimby and Lucius, age seventeen, giving a demonstration, along with Lucius’s twenty-three-year-old brother, Henry. It is not fully clear when Quimby stopped working with Lucius, but Seale’s annotations indicate 1847. Lucius’s extant journal writings about his experiences with Quimby conclude in 1845.

  Quimby’s quote “disease is in his belief” is from Dresser (1921). His reference to the cure being “not in the medicine” is from his letter to the Portland Daily Advertiser (ME), published February 14, 1862. His statement “why cannot I cure myself” appears in Phineas Parkhurst Quimby: Revealer of Spiritual Healing to this Age by Ann Ballew Hawkins (DeVorss, 1951) and in “True Origin of Christian Science,” an unsigned article in the New York Times, July 10, 1904. Neither Hawkins nor the Times article have proven wholly reliable sources for quoted material, but the statement is closely echoed in Dresser’s The Quimby Manuscripts. Quimby’s statement “all science is a part of God” is from The Complete Collected Works of Dr. Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (2008, 2012). Quimby’s statements on “false beliefs” and “our happiness” are from Dresser (1921). Arthur Vergara’s “New Thought’s Unfounded Foundation,” Creative Thought, July 2011, directed me to Quimby’s early use of the term “unconscious.” For a full view of Quimby’s use of the term, see Hughes (2009) and The Complete Collected Works of Dr. Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (2008, 2012).

  Quimby’s cure of the mayor of Bath, Maine, is from “Mary Baker G. Eddy,” part 2, by Georgine Milmine, McClure’s Magazine, February 1907. The Milmine series of articles is controversial; if approached cautiously it can provide useful historical portraiture. For the series background, see Gillian Gill’s indispensable Mary Baker Eddy (Perseus/Radcliffe Biography Series, 1998). Quimby’s reported cure of the woman who was unable to speak is from a transcribed letter of April 29, 1862, in the Portland Daily Advertiser, found in the archives of the Mary Baker Eddy Library for the Betterment of Humanity, Boston. Quimby’s large number of patients is reported in “Warren Felt Evans, M.D.,” by William J. Leonard, Practical Ideals, vol. 10, no. 2, September–October 1905. The article on his patients comin
g from “the four winds of heaven” is quoted from Dresser (1921).

  The neighbor’s recollection of Quimby in Belfast is from a testimonial dated January 14, 1907, by Charles C. Sargent, in the archives of the Mary Baker Eddy Library. Quimby’s unsuccessful treatment was reported in a letter dated April 10, 1907, by Lydia P. French, also in the Mary Baker Eddy Library archives. These passages are quoted courtesy of the Mary Baker Eddy Library.

  A rare biographical record of Warren Felt Evans appears in an early-twentieth-century series of articles by William J. Leonard in the journal Practical Ideals, starting with “The Pioneer Apostle of Mental Science,” in vol. 6, no. 1, July–August 1903, and continuing with “Warren Felt Evans, M.D.,” published in three parts: in vol. 10, no. 2, September–October 1905; vol. 10, no. 3, November 1905; and vol. 10, no. 4, December 1905. Unless otherwise indicated, Evans is quoted, as are his journal passages, from this series. Also helpful is the article “Warren F. Evans” by Robert Allen Campbell, The Christian Metaphysician, November 1888. I am grateful to historian Keith McNeil for providing these rare articles.

  Swedenborg is quoted on the mind and body from his 1771 book, The True Christian Religion, English translation published by J. B. Lippincott, 1875. See Chapter 8 of this book for the full rendering of Swedenborg’s statement. Evans’s quote about the preexistence of disease is from his book The Primitive Mind-Cure (H. H. Carter & Co., 1885). Julius Dresser’s 1876 recollection is from his pamphlet, The True History of Mental Science (1887).

  On the life and career of Mary Baker Eddy key books include Gill (1998); Satter (1999); The Emergence of Christian Science in American Life by Stephen Gottschalk (University of California Press, 1973); Robert Peel’s three-volume biography, Mary Baker Eddy, published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston: The Years of Discovery (1966), The Years of Trial (1971), and The Years of Authority (1977); and Peel’s Christian Science: Its Encounter with American Culture (Holt, 1958). Peel and Gottschalk were each affiliated with the Christian Science church, but their scholarship has proven independent-minded and impeccable. For an overview, I also benefited from the exhibits and resources at the Longyear Museum in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Eddy is quoted about her father from her Retrospection and Introspection (1891, 1892, First Church of Christ, Scientist)

  The Eddy-Dresser correspondence of 1866 appears in Peel (1966) and Gill (1998). Eddy’s handwritten note is preserved in the archives of the Mary Baker Eddy Library.

  Eddy’s statement on evil is from her Message to the Mother Church, June 1901 (Rumford Press, 1902). Her reference to “material medicines” is from her Miscellaneous Writings (1896). Eddy’s tribute to Quimby (“who healed with the truth that Christ taught”) appeared in the Lynn Weekly Reporter (MA), February 14, 1866. Eddy’s statement on “Quimbyism” is from Peel’s The Years of Discovery (1966), which is also the source for Eddy’s correspondence calling Evans a “half scientist.”

  Details on the Dresser family can be found in C. Alan Anderson’s doctoral thesis, Horatio Dresser and the Philosophy of New Thought (Department of Philosophy, Boston University, 1963). Anderson provides rare and important source material on the life of Horatio Dresser, whom he depicts, with persuasiveness, as a notable philosopher. For Horatio Dresser’s analysis of New Thought and related movements, see his essay collection, Voices of Freedom (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1899). Anderson himself was an impassioned and thoughtful scholar of New Thought; he passed away in 2012. His essays on the history of New Thought can be found at www.​New​Every​Moment.​com.

  The career of Edward J. Arens is considered in J. Gordon Melton’s important article “The Case of Edward J. Arens and the Distortion of the History of New Thought,” Journal for the Society of the Study of Metaphysical Religion (hereafter cited as JSSMR), Spring 1996. The Journal for the Society of the Study of Metaphysical Religion was the sole scholarly journal dedicated to the study of New Thought. Its twenty volumes, published from spring 1995 to fall 2004, gathered some of the finest historical study and criticism of this metaphysical movement, whose impact and history have generally been underappreciated in academia. The journal’s tenure was too short and its availability today is unfortunately limited. I am very grateful to its founding editor, Dell deChant, for lending me his very rare complete set.

  Andrew Jackson Davis’s reference to a “Divine Positive Mind” is from his 1847 book, The Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelations, and a Voice to Mankind, a massive and sprawling channeled work that briefly gained considerable popularity.

  Eddy’s charge of “ignorant Mesmerist” typifies the byzantine polemics of this debate. Historian Horatio Dresser repeated this charge—e.g., in the journals The Arena of May 1899 and Unity of March 1906, and again in his 1919 book A History of the New Thought Movement. Eddy used the phrase once in a private letter to Unitarian minister James Henry Wiggin on January 15, 1886. It is not clear whether Dresser would have seen this letter. Likewise, important historical works, such as Charles Braden’s Spirits in Rebellion, suggest that Eddy called Quimby a “mere Mesmerist.” The sources again are unclear.

  Eddy is further quoted on Quimby from her self-published pamphlets Historical Sketch of Metaphysical Healing (1885) and Historical Sketch of Christian Science Mind-Healing (1890).

  Horatio Dresser’s handwritten letters of February 3, 1900, to Mary Baker Eddy, and January 15 and February 3, 1900, to Judge Hanna, are in the archive of the Mary Baker Eddy Library. They are quoted courtesy of the Mary Baker Eddy Library.

  George Quimby’s guardedness about his father’s manuscripts is depicted in “The Story of the Real Mrs. Eddy,” Human Life, April 1907, one article of a thirteen-part series that Sibyl Wilbur wrote on Eddy for Human Life magazine from December 1906 to December 1907. Horatio Dresser also alludes to his long efforts to gain access to Quimby’s writings in The Quimby Manuscripts (1921). Valuable details about this appear in Gill (1998).

  Eddy’s quote “I re-arranged a few” is from her Mind-Healing: Historical Sketch (1888). George Quimby’s observation about Eddy sitting with Quimby is from Dresser’s The Quimby Manuscripts (1921). The New York Times published its unsigned assessment of Eddy as “True Origin of Christian Science,” July 10, 1904. My conclusion about the article mislabeling Eddy’s preface as Quimby’s own is from a comparison of transcribed manuscripts in the Mary Baker Eddy Library to the New York Times analysis. Specifically, a transcription of a Quimby manuscript acquired by the archive in 1941 shows the preface with the tagline “Mary M. Glover,” the name Eddy used in 1868. Gillian Gill (1998) notes: “It is also accepted by all that by 1868 Mrs. Glover had appended to this text a signed preface of her own …”

  CHAPTER THREE:

  “TO REDEEM DEFEAT BY NEW THOUGHT”

  Any study of Emma Curtis Hopkins must begin, as mine did, with J. Gordon Melton’s seminal article, “New Thought’s Hidden History: Emma Curtis Hopkins, Forgotten Founder,” JSSMR, Spring 1995. (For alternate viewpoints see “Quimby as Founder of New Thought” by C. Alan Anderson, JSSMR, Spring 1997, Arthur Vergara’s “New Thought’s Accidental Acquisition,” Creative Mind, June 2011, and “New Thought’s Unfounded Foundation,” Creative Mind, July 2011.) Also important are Satter (1998); Gill (1998); Braden (1963, 1987); Materra (1997); Peel (1971); Gottschalk (1973); and Emma Curtis Hopkins: Forgotten Founder of New Thought by Gail M. Harley (Syracuse University Press, 2002). Harley is particularly strong on Hopkins’s final years. On the social atmosphere of Hopkins’s career see “Christian Science and the Nineteenth Century Women’s Movement” by Gage William Chapel, JSSMR, Spring 2000.

  Hopkins’s report of a “late serious illness” is from a letter of December 12, 1883, quoted from Harley (2002). Hopkins’s letter of January 14, 1884, is from Peel (1971). Hopkins’s letters of August 16, 1884, and her undated letter (“I received a peremptory message”) are from Harley (2002). Her letter of November 4, 1885, is from Peel (1971). Gottschalk (1973) called my attention to Hopkins’s article “God’s Omnipresence,” which ap
peared in The Journal of Christian Science, April 1884.

  Materra is quoted from his 1997 dissertation, Women in Early New Thought. The numbers of female Christian Science practitioners are from Rolling Away the Stone: Mary Baker Eddy’s Challenge to Materialism by Stephen Gottschalk (Indiana University Press, 2006, 2011).

  Hopkins’s attacks on A. J. Swarts are reported in Peel (1971), Braden (1963, 1987), and Harley (2002). Hopkins and Swarts are announced as joint editors of Mental Science Magazine and Mind Cure Journal in the March 18, 1886, issue of The Index: A Weekly Paper, a progressive journal connected with the Unitarian-Universalist movement.

  For information on Hopkins’s husband and son I drew on Harley (2002), New Hampshire Death and Burial Records, and the 1906 Manchester (NH) City Directory.

  On Hopkins’s spiritual outlook and her relationship with Mary H. Plunkett I benefited from Gill (1998), Harley (2002), Satter (1999), Peel (1971), and Gottschalk (1973). Hopkins is quoted from her Class Lessons 1888 compiled and edited by Elizabeth C. Bogart (DeVorss, 1977). Hopkins’s final letter to Eddy on Christmas of 1886 is from Peel (1971).