While Dods may have been tending toward New Thought, the man to be considered next was the one whose career inspired the development of New Thought and whose insights pointed the way.

3. Phineas Parkhurst Quimby

Phineas Parkhurst ("Park") Quimby was born on February 16, 1802, in Lebanon, New Hampshire, and died on January 16, 1866, in Belfast, Maine. He lived practically all his life in Maine. Quimby received practically no formal education, but was intelligent and inventive.

Until becoming a mesmerist, as a result of visits of passing mesmerists, he was a clockmaker. In the early 1840's he gave mesmeric lectures and demonstrations. His writings show him to have been acquainted with some philosophy and a considerable amount of mesmeric writing.

He discovered a youth, Lucius Burkmar, who had remarkable extrasensory abilities when mesmerized. Quimby used him in diagnosing illness and prescribing remedies. However, Quimby came to believe that the boy was reading minds, rather than doing more helpful work in healing, so he abandoned use of Lucius and somehow developed his own conscious extrasensory perception.

When thus equipped Quimby practiced a form of healing in which one's mind was not subjected to another human mind, as in mesmerism, but was allowed to attain its fullest freedom in relation to whatever divine dimension of reality there may be.

The exact theory that underlay Quimby's practice is something that cannot be determined here, for the consideration of his large body of writing would be a task requiring a major study in its own right. However, for the purposes of considering Dresser and New Thought, it is not necessary to know with certainty what Quimby believed; what is most important here is that which will be seen in regard to Dresser's understanding of what he meant, and what Evans produced after becoming acquainted with Quimby. In one of his writings on Quimby, Dresser summarized Quimby's views as follows:

Had Dr. [as he was called] Quimby systematized [his] writings, the development of his thought would have been somewhat as follows:--

(1) The omnipresent Wisdom, the warm, loving, tender Father of us all, Creator of all the universe, whose works are good, whose substance is an invisible reality.

(2) The real man, whose life is eternal in the invisible kingdom of God, whose senses are spiritual and function independently of matter.

(3) The visible world, which Dr. Quimby once characterized as "the shadow of Wisdom's amusements"; that is, nature is only the outward projection or manifestation of an inward activity far more real and enduring.

(4) Spiritual matter, or fine interpenetrating substance, directly responsive to thought and subconsciously embodying in the flesh the fears, beliefs, hopes, errors, and joys of the mind.

(5) Disease is due to false reasoning in regard to sensations, which man unwittingly develops by impressing wrong thoughts and mental pictures upon the subconscious spiritual matter.

(6) As disease is due to false reasoning, so health is due to knowledge of the truth. To remove disease permanently, it is necessary to know the cause, the error which led to it. "The explanation is the cure."

(7) To know the truth about life is therefore the sovereign remedy for all ills. This truth Jesus came to declare. Jesus knew how he cured and Dr. Quimby, without taking any credit to himself as a discoverer, believed that he understood and practiced the same great truth or science.

Quimby did not live to publish a book containing his views. But they served as an inspiration for writings of some who went to him as patients. The first one to publish was Warren Felt Evans.

4. Warren Felt Evans

i. Introduction

Evans (December 23, 1817-September 4, 1889) was a Methodist minister who found in the writings of Swedenborg a message that he unsuccessfully sought to share with his congregation. He became a Swedenborgian and did some missionary work for the Swedenborgian New Church. But he turned to spiritual healing and writing about it as his full-time occupation.

Evans is of interest as a person with considerable knowledge of philosophy who worked into his system views of traditional philosophers, Quimby, Swedenborg, and others, eventually reaching a position that came to be known as New Thought. This is in contrast with Dresser's mature views relative to New Thought. Apparently Evans was not greatly concerned with reasoning out carefully the grounds for his outlook. He seems to have been satisfied to accept views of others that he intuitively took to be consist ent with his own insights. However, he did seek to draw out of the philosophy that he accepted the practical consequences relating to healing.

ii. Swedenborgian Background

At the time of his going to Quimby, probably in 1863, Evans held Swedenborgian views. There can be no reasonable doubt of this, judging by the frequent references to Swedenborg in books by Evans and from the evaluation of him by Dresser as "an average exponent of Swedenborg's teachings" whose "chief interest was to spread knowledge of Swedenborg's doctrines" before he turned to healing.

While a full presentation of Swedenborgianism is beyond the scope of this study, some of the major aspects of it deserve mention. They show both the fertile ground that Quimby's thought found in Evans and also the perspective away from which Evans moved in later

 years.Swedenborg adhered to a theism that he expressed in his own terms.  He

It may seem strange that with Swedenborg's views of close connection of the divine and the natural, the New Church did not promptly come to the fore in healing. However, it did not. But it did not wholly overlook the topic. One of its men wrote that the

mind-cure part of [its] doctrines [could] be summed up in this one sentence: All diseases are from the Spiritual world under the law of correspondences, and if their spiritual causes are removed, the diseases will disappear."

In recent years that church's interest in healing has increased. A Dresser niece, Gwynne Dresser Mack, has contributed significantly to this present concern among Swedenborgians.

After remarking that Evans"possessed the ability to grasp fundamental principles and think them out for himself," Dresser says:

He had all the essentials, so far as spiritual principles were concerned; for the devotee of Swedenborg has a direct clue to the application of spiritual philosophy to life. What Mr. Evans lacked was the new impetus, to put two and two together. He lacked the method by which to apply his idealism and his theology to health. Mr. Quimby gave him this impetus. He [Quimby] possessed the method.

In his pre-Quimby writing Evans showed that he did have an outlook that was leading him in the direction of the Quimby thought, which made one's physical condition dependent on one's nonphysical state. However, Evans showed that he had not yet reached the view of Quimby. Evans at this time placed so much emphasis on the separation side of Swedenborgian closeness yet separation of physical and nonphysical worlds that the influence of mental states was decidedly limited:

Our mental states here affect the appearance of the external world, and tend, in some degree, to adjust the outward universe in harmony, both in appearance and reality, with our spiritual condition. This important law of our spiritual nature operates but imperfectly in this world. In the next it will act without obstruction, so that the heaven in which we are placed, in its outward arrangements, will be the exact representative and correspondence of our interior state of mind and heart, or wisdom and lov e. . . . The outward world will be in correspondence with the world within, and will be the creation, as it were, of our spiritual state, just as the features of the face shape themselves in harmony with the varying emotions of the soul.

He believes that "the earth is made of too gross a substance, too coarse a stuff, to express the spiritual and celestial," although "outward nature is the shadow of heavenly realities":

The things in the natural world not only represent the realities of the celestial realms as words express ideas, but they exist from the spiritual world just as the body derives its life from the soul. The material universe is the region of effects; spirit is the only causal agent. Matter is dead and passive; all life in it is the result of an influx from the realm of spirit, which is the seat of causation. Thus the earth is conjoined to the heavens, as an effect is connected with the producing cause a nd made one with it. Before anything can exist in the natural world, it must first exist in the world of mind or the spiritual world, just as before an architect can construct an edifice, the plan or idea of it must pre-exist in his mind. The edifice when completed is the outward embodiment of the interior conception.

Thus it is seen that while Evans must have found himself not immediately in agreement with Quimby, he was not so fundamentally out of agreement as to make appreciation difficult. Had Evans had no philosophy but that of Swedenborg at his disposal, perhaps he would have done as most Swedenborgians didfail to incorporate the insights of Quimby into his own outlook. But Evans was interested in other philosophy also; this now is to be considered in connection with the development of the philosophy of Evans.

iii. Development of the Evans Philosophy

In the midst of an essentially Swedenborgian book of 1864 Evans gives a clue to the extra-Swedenborgian metaphysical content of his relatively early philosophy. He refers to the division of philosophy into forms of Sensualism, Idealism, Mysticism, and Skepticism by Victor Cousin in his "profound work on the History of Modern Philosophy."

Presumably the work referred to is the three-volumes-in-two translation, constituting the second series of lectures, of the noted eclectic philosopher, who knew Hegel, Schelling, and Jacobi. The fourth lecture of the second volume, "Classification of Philosophical Systems," especially seems to be referred to by Evans. Beyond this, it is worth noting that Cousin devotes the next two lectures to Indian philosophy and, as does Evans, pays his respects to the ancient Egyptians. Numerous references to Oriental thought are scattered through the work. He also voices the belief that "nothing goes back--everything advances!" Evans must have welcomed Cousin's brief, but friendly, refere nce to Swedenborg. Perhaps the most important fact about Cousin's history, in relation to Evans, is that while he devotes his last eleven lectures to Locke, he says little about Berkeley, referring one to his first series of lectures, not contained in this history.

Obviously this is no proof that Evans was poorly grounded in the idealism of Berkeley when he took note of Cousin. However, it is an interesting bit of information to add to other indications that Evans gradually grew into idealism. In his early Swedenborgian period Evans says that "the Spiritual world is entirely distinct from the natural world,being known by different properties and governed by other laws." "The two realms have nothing in common as to their properties, yet they are not wholly disjoined and communication between the two is not closed." By way of contrast, in his last published book, in which he still frequently refers to Swedenborg, Evans says that "thought and existence are absolutely identical and inseparable."

Perhaps the simplest characterization of his later view is that given in his statement that "the highest development of religious thought and feeling is that of a Christian Pantheism, not the cold, intellectual system of Spinoza, but one nearer to that of the warm and loving Fichte, who exhibited the blessedness of a life in God."

Obviously, when pantheism is used in such a way it does not mean the reduction of God to the totality of the universe as it is discoverable by means open to public verification, but includes all of that and all other realms of being, together called God.

It is on the issue of pantheism that New Thought was to follow Evans, and Dresser was to dissent. So this chapter and the next, on Dresser, are by no means mutually exclusive; they are divided chiefly in relation to emphasis on the thought of Evans and his predecessors in one and on Dresser in the other. Neither is to be considered in isolation from the other.

It was in his writings on healing that the philosophy of Evans assumed its final form, developing gradually over his years of writing on this subject. With regard to the first such book, The Mental-Cure, 1869, Dresser observes that this was "the first volume issued in our country on this subject," one that soon was read widely in this country and Europe, where it was translated into several languages. He adds that in this work while Evans "branches out freely and expounds Swedenborg's views in his own fashion, he is still largely dependent on the teachings of the Swedish seer."

This observation seems justified in light of an examination of The Mental-Cure. In this book Evans considers various possibilities with regard to what life may be.

Before turning to Evans in relation to Swedenborg in that volume, it is of interest to see with regard to Dods that Evans takes very brief note of the possibility that vital phenomena may be attributable to electricity. However, he rejects this view; he believes that this would require the addition to one's stock of electricity from an electro-magnetic battery. He remarks that there has been no demonstration of the existence of a nervous fluid.

Turning to what Evans does believe life to be, he quotes Swedenborg as saying that "love is the life of man." Apparently this assertion is its own proof for Evans. He says that it is "like the creative fiat, 'Let there be light.'" For Evans it was light that needed no argument for support. He saw love as "the inmost life of the soul." This being so, the rest of a human being, including thought, is the development of love.

Accepting a Swedenborgian dualism at this time, he assumed that there are "two distinct substances in the universe," mind or spirit and matter. After accepting this problem from Swedenborg, it is easy enough to accept the Swedenborgian solution of a divine influx to connect the two. Apparently not realizing that he could start with the view that love is both ultimate and the inherent property of the human being, Evans locates love in God and sees love as requiring transmission to human beings. It is thought to be necessary for "our hearts to receive the influx of the divine and heavenly love."

While maintaining a dualism at this time, he asserted that there is "only one Life, from which all in heaven and earth receive their being, but each in a different degree." The differing degrees probably are the crux of the problem. He must have been too firmly embedded in Swedenborgianism to discard its dualism. Differing degrees of clarity of expression of divine life apparently suggested an essential difference between the human and the divine.

However, he managed to apply Quimby's healing technique within the bounds of Swedenborgian dualism. It was clear to Evans that whatever separation there might be between the material and the nonmaterial, the material was subject to the control of the nonmaterial.

He explained this on the basis of what he offered as a "general law--that influx is always into forms that are correspondences." The divine life-love will be expressed in one in accordance with the sort of receptacle that he or she forms out of himself or herself. Since the nonintellectual side of one is basic in this view, the problem of providing the receptacle most appropriate to advancing the health and happiness of oneself becomes a matter of adopting the proper emotional attitude. This will provide the way for, or properly direct, the divine influx, allowing it to be expressed in the fullest, most healthful way possible. In short, it is for us to set out sails in such manner as to catch the divine wind. This is not to say that one would be deprived of the divine influx in any case; however, the most fortunate relationship of human and divine is that of coo peration.

This is a religious outlook, much to the liking of Dresser. Dresser believed that Evans began his writing on healing at the peak of his spiritual insight and gradually declined. Dresser maintained that in The Mental-Cure Evans had a more spiritual view, including both cognitive and affectional aspects of human beings, emphasizing the importance of unselfish love in the pursuit of health, than was the case in later Evans writings. As Evans further developed his thought, he gave increased emphasis to thought.

As Evans puts it, his next book, Mental Medicine, 1872, "is, in some degree, supplementary to the previous volume of the author on the mental aspect of disease and the psychological method of treatment." In it he gives less evidence of traditional philosophical thought than of delving into medicine, mesmerism, and poetry. As in all his publications after finding Swedenborg, that thinker and seer occupies a place of importance. But the following Evans observation on Plato may indicate some turning away from Swedenborg. In The Mental-Cure Evans refers to the futility of studying human nature from the standpoint of how it "was designed to be," as this yields only "an ideal model, like Plato's perfect man." However, in Mental Medicine although there is not a fully adequate basis of comparison with regard to his views on Plato, Evans shows appreciation of Plato's ideal forms. He observes that while Swedenborg is clearer than Plato, there is close resemblance between Plato's theory of Ideas and Swedenborg's do ctrine of correspondence. In both there is some unseen pattern that is the model of that which is apparent to us.