we pay for failing to educate our farmer's daughters.

That she had a power to cure disease I do not doubt, because I have a
little of it myself. At first my opinion was that her "Science" made
its way by curing the imaginary ailments of the idle rich. If a person
has nothing to do but think that he is sick, you can work easy
miracles by persuading him to think that he is well; and if he has
nothing to do but think that he is well, he will help you to build
marble churches and maintain propaganda societies. But recently I have
experimented with mental healing--enough to satisfy myself that the
subconscious mind which controls our physical functions can be
powerfully influenced by the will.

I told the story of some of these experiments in Hearst's Magazine for
April, 1914. Suffice it here to say that if you will lay your hands
upon a sick person, forming a vivid mental picture of the bodily
changes you desire, and concentrating the power of your will upon
them, you may be surprised by the results, especially if you possess
anything in the way of psychic gifts. You do not have to adopt any
theories, you do not have to do it in the name of any divinity,
ancient or modern; the only bearing of such ideas is that they serve
to persuade people to make the experiment, and to make it with
persistence and intensity. So it has come about that "miracles" of
healing are associated with "faith"; and so it comes about that
scientists are apt to flout the subject. But read of the work of Janet
and Charcot and their followers at the Salpetriere; they have proven
that all kinds of seeming-organic ailments may be entirely hysterical
in nature, and may be cured by the simplest form of suggestion.
Understanding this, you may find it more easy to credit the fact that
cripples do sometimes throw away their crutches in the grotto of
Lourdes. For my part, I can believe that Jesus performed all the
miracles of healing attributed to him--including the raising up of
people pronounced to be dead by the ignorance of that time. I am
convinced that in the new science of psycho-analysis we have a
universe as vast as the universe of the atom or of the stars.

The Christian Scientists have got hold of this power; they have mixed
it up with metaphysic and divinity, and built some four or five
hundred churches, and printed the Mother Church alone knows how many
million pamphlets and books. I once invested three of my hard-earned
dollars for a copy of t