● ● ● manuscript, but her own energies during the Wentworth period were devoted to the perfecting of the new work in which her deepening convictions found expression.
The first question in the Quimby “Questions and Answers” was: “You must have a feeling of repugnance towards certain patients[;] how do you overcome it and how may I do the same?”143 The first question in The Science of Man is: “What is God?”144 The whole distance between Quimby’s psychology and Mrs. Glover’s metaphysics seems to be suggested in those two openings.
Fortunately we are able to follow fairly well the metamorphosis through which Mrs. Glover’s work passed, for copies of it in its various stages exist in Mrs. Wentworth’s handwriting.145
The earliest of these is entitled “Rudiments. The Science of Man. by Mary M. Glover. For the learner.” This is composed of thirty-five questions and answers, entirely different from the fifteen in the Quimby “Questions and Answers.” A slightly variant version is entitled simply “The Science of Man,” but includes in the same manuscript another new essay “The Soul’s Enquiries of Man.” Mrs. Glover’s growing awareness of the uniqueness of her discovery is apparent in a passage in this second “Science of Man”:
Unless the principle is understood you cannot act in it and as it never has been taught in science by any written or published MSS from any known individual but me I claim that it cannot have been understood, except by Elijah, Jesus, his disciples and Paul[,] and their writings do not teach it unless you understand their scientific meaning, and not the interpretations which belief hath given them.146
Other versions followed, each one showing some advance over the earlier ones in clarity and consistency. What appears to be the best of them in Sally Wentworth’s handwriting is very close in content ● ● ●
143 [“Extracts from Dr. P. P. Quimby’s Writings: The Science of Man, or the principle which controls all phenomena,” c. 1868, A11314, p. 2, MBEL.]
144 [Mary Baker Glover, The Science of Man, by Which the Sick Are Healed. Embracing Questions and Answers in Moral Science (Lynn, MA: Thos. P. Nichols, Printer, 1876), p. 3.]
145 At least five versions in Mrs. Wentworth’s handwriting are known. See the following items in MBEL: A10064, A11350, A11351, A11353, A11354.
146 [Mary Baker Glover, “The Science of Man,” manuscript, n.d., A11353, p. 5, MBEL.]