The lineage in one paragraph
Phineas Quimby (1802-1866) treated patients in Maine using what he called the Christ method — essentially, helping them recognise that their symptoms followed their beliefs. His patient Mary Baker Eddy went on to found Christian Science, which split off into its own institution. The looser stream that didn't follow Eddy became New Thought: a decentralised movement organised around small denominations (Unity, Religious Science, Divine Science) and a steady output of practical-mysticism books pitched at a popular American audience.
Working assumptions
New Thought writers share a small set of operating premises: that there is one divine mind (God, the All, the Infinite); that human consciousness is a derivative of and continuous with that mind; that scripture and tradition are useful symbolic descriptions of psychological-spiritual realities rather than historical reports; and that disciplined attention to thought, feeling and inner imagery shapes outer circumstance. The vocabulary of prosperity, abundance, manifestation and demonstration all comes from this tradition.
Why it matters
Almost every twentieth-century self-help book of any commercial size — Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich, Norman Vincent Peale's Power of Positive Thinking, Wayne Dyer's bibliography, Esther Hicks's Abraham material — descends from New Thought. The fingerprints are everywhere; the tradition itself is rarely named. Knowing the lineage explains why so much modern spiritual marketing sounds the way it does.
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