"It was Dr. Quimby's chief aim to establish a science of life and happiness, which all could learn, and which should relieve humanity of sickness and misery." But after our various quotations, we can readily perceive, as his biographer maintains, that "by the word, 'science,'" he always meant "not what is commonly understood by that word, but something spiritual." By "science," in short, or what he sometimes called "Wisdom," Dr. Quimby meant simply the principle of the universe, the presence, truth and power of God, at the foundation of the human soul. Dr. Quimby said, and his disciples have said after him, that he "never went into any trance," and was "a strong disbeliever in _Spiritualism_, as understood by that name." Pursuing this statement in detail, we find that his criticism of the subject consisted mostly in his denying the accuracy of information derived from clairvoyants and spirit-mediums. But, in the words of one of his most intimate friends, he considered our two states of physical and spiritual life as "only a difference in dissolving views," and he believed that his own thought and senses existed, a part of the time, out of matter, or in "the scientific world."[11] He even affirmed, in connection with his view of disease as an impression of mind, that, transferring himself into the spiritual state of existence, he had cured his own parents, _after death_, of ailments which had not left them when they departed from their physical condition. To this strange man, Dr. Quimby, the world of matter and the world of spirit were so interblended as to be only two phases of the same thing, _both of which he constantly experienced_. "What," he asks, "is this body that we see?" It is "a tenement for man to occupy _when he pleases_. But, as a man knows not himself, he reasons as though he were one of the fixtures of his house, or body.... What is the true definition of death. Death is the name of an idea.... So the destruction of an idea is death." Man "is dying and living all the time to error, till he dies the death of all his opinions and beliefs. Therefore to be free from death is to be alive in truth." In no other way than this, would Dr. Quimby even recognize such a fact as death. When he came to die himself, he said "I am perfectly willing for the _change_.... But I know that I shall be _right here with you, just the same as I have always been_. I do not dread the change any more than if I were going on a trip to Philadelphia." Dr. Quimby, then, in his own way, certainly did believe, accept and avow what is commonly understood as Spiritualism, but he repudiated its frequently doubtful accompaniments.