Ideas are like fruit.

The fact that the mode in which I cure disease cannot be understood by the learned may lead some to suppose that I do not understand myself. This is a mistake and arises from the fact that certain demagogues of all classes take upon themselves the responsibility of giving their opinions on every subject however complicated it may be. They always make war whether they see or hear about the thing in question or not and are always opposed as a stumbling block to every new science and invention.

Every science has its shadow based on opinions about the phenomenon as in the invention of steam, for instance. When it was first claimed that it could be applied to the advantage of the world, up sprang this set of demagogues to show off their knowledge. And while the first steamer was crossing the Atlantic, one of the learned quacks, lecturing in New York City, was proving by actual demonstration that the steamer could not carry coal enough to drive her to New York. But for all his wisdom, the steamer kept plowing along unheeding prophetic voice till it arrived safely, thus proving by practice what the theory had contended for. This class of men abound everywhere. They are as superstitious as the people were in the days of the Salem witchcraft, and if it were not for their acquired abilities, would become a laughing stock to all sensible men. They are narrow-minded and place a great reliance on their education, supposing that education is wisdom, while it as often proves the shallowness of knowledge as it does its superiority. Wisdom is not learning; it was before education.

Ideas are like fruit. If the eye is the judge, then man deceives himself, for sometimes the most beautiful fruit contains the most poison, and some ideas seem so beautiful and desirable that we eat of them. At first they appear pleasant, but soon we find that we have eaten the poison of some idea in the shape of cancer that will gnaw our very life from us. The man of sympathy could detect this loathsome disease or idea by its odor and destroy it in embryo before it takes form and comes forth in the body. Here you see the two characters: one, ignorant of his situation, is living without God or truth in death and disease ready to be destroyed at any time, while the man of sympathy perceives by the sense of smell the stench of this loathsome disease long before it comes to the man of sight or opinions. My theory is to put man in possession of a wisdom by which he can detect these false fruits from the real, lest he should eat of the tree of disease and die. The tree of life will open his eyes and he will see his nakedness and then he will see that all his knowledge is cut off.


April 1862