{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_39895/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_39895","id":"gutenberg_39895","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39895","summary":null,"tags":["Category: History - American","Category: Humour","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Christian Science"],"text":"Produced by Bryan Ness and the Online Distributed\nProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was\nproduced from scanned images of public domain material\nfrom the Google Print project.)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n  THE CHURCH OF ST. BUNCO\n\n  A DRASTIC TREATMENT OF A COPYRIGHTED\n  RELIGION--UN-CHRISTIAN NON-SCIENCE\n\n  BY GORDON CLARK\n\n  THE Abbey Press\n\n  PUBLISHERS\n\n  114 FIFTH AVENUE\n  London      NEW YORK      Montreal\n\n\n\n\n  Copyright, 1901,\n  by THE Abbey Press\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS.\n\n\n  CHAPTER                                                    PAGE\n\n         Preface                                                7\n\n      I. A Bird's-eye View of the Thing                        11\n\n     II. The Origin of the \"New Thought\"                       15\n\n    III. Dr. Quimby's most Distinguished Patient               41\n\n     IV. A Great \"Metaphysical\" Novel                          59\n\n      V. A Soft Set of Critics                                 74\n\n     VI. \"The Precious Volume\"                                 78\n\n    VII. \"Key\" to the Eddy Scripture, Science and Health       95\n\n   VIII. \"Christian Science\" Organizing Forces                108\n\n     IX. The One True \"Mother Church\"                         120\n\n      X. A Martyr to \"Science\"                                131\n\n     XI. Metaphysics                                          155\n\n    XII. Further Analysis of the Universe                     165\n\n   XIII. A Special Look at Space and Time                     180\n\n    XIV. Creative Mind Further Probed                         186\n\n     XV. The Genesis of \"Transcendental\" Ideas                193\n\n    XVI. The Grand Result of Dissecting Phenomena             196\n\n   XVII. Some Sequences of Absolute Idealism                  206\n\n  XVIII. Various Schools of the \"New Thought\"                 219\n\n    XIX. An Advanced Healer of To-day                         232\n\n     XX. Conclusion                                           248\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE.\n\n\nThe purpose of this book is not to deny the power of mind over matter, or\nof the human mind over the human body, but to show that the foolish and\npestilent thing termed \"Christian Science\" is a leech fastened upon these\ngreat truths, mostly, if not wholly, to batten on them.\n\nThere is no use of saying this to \"Christian Scientists\" themselves--an\nobedient chain-gang in hypnotic servitude. But people who are not already\n\"in Science\" (to use the shibboleth of those who are), ought to be\nprompted not to get there. The best way in general, I think, is to show\nthat even the historical and biographical claims at the base of the\nmovement are false. If the personal veracity of the head of a church\ncannot be trusted, \"divine revelations,\" \"miracles\" and \"mental medicine,\"\nproceeding from such a source, will naturally be accepted only by the very\nsoft, or else by the very hard for solid considerations.\n\nIs there no sincerity, then, in \"Christian Science\"? Of course there is.\nEven the \"discoverer and founder\" of it undoubtedly believes certain of\nits asseverations. Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy must be credited, for instance,\nwith the conviction that she has some knowledge of \"metaphysics\"--a\nconviction that is nothing worse than a pitiable mistake, which is\nexploded here at some length. When, as a result of this mistake, she\nteaches that matter is nothing--not even a condition of anything--only\nsincerity can account for such lunacy. Yet herein \"Christian Science\" has\nits whole rational, or rather irrational, breath of life.\n\nSome \"Christian Scientists\" sincerely believe in an equivalent for \"black\nmagic.\" As, in their view, \"concentration of mind\" can cure disease, they\nthink it can also throw disease upon enemies, or upon backsliders from\n\"science.\" It has been suggested even to the present writer that illness\nmight be cast upon him if he antagonized \"the true faith.\" According to\ncertain dissidents from \"Christian Science,\" \"black magic,\" though with\nmuch talk of \"chastening love\"--(every crime of religious hypocrisy is\nalways committed in the name of \"love\")--has been persistently tried on\nheretical wanderers. In the natural course of time some of them are dead;\nbut those whom I have met are not only living, they are comfortably fat.\n\nAs \"Christian Science\" has to me no genuine basis, either in facts,\nscience, theology, metaphysics or therapeutics, but is a mendacious,\ncontradictory, pretentious humbug, I do not hesitate to use such weapons,\nwhether narration, logic, or satire, as are adapted to puncture it. We\nhear that \"Christian Science\" has done good. So it has, in some instances,\nbut only through means which it pretends to repudiate, and through the\ntrustful ignorance of those who have been duped by it. We hear, also, that\n\"Christian Scientists\" are specially \"educated and intelligent.\" I deny\nit. No one of them seems ever to have heard of the history of\nphilosophy--a cemetery in which have long lain buried the most of \"Mother\"\nEddy's \"divine revelations,\" \"original discoveries\" and \"absolute\ndemonstrations.\" Her followers can doubtless _read_, or they would not be\navailable as purchasers of her _Science and Health_; but, if they could\n_think_, they never would have read the book through. From beginning to\nend, it is simply a batch of self-contradictions and self-nullities. These\nare capped with the most impudent claim ever uttered on earth--the claim\nthat the human mind in its natural state cannot comprehend the divine mind\nincarnate in the author. If caustic is applied to such nonsense, there is\nno need of apology. The only doubt is that the malefaction is worth the\nburning.\n\nG. C.\n\n\n\n\nTHE CHURCH OF ST. BUNCO.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I.\n\nA BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF THE THING.\n\n\nThe date of this writing is the year 1901.\n\nAbout a quarter of a century ago, Boston, the city of modified Puritans\nand keen business thrift, evolved a new religion. Modern Boston, however,\nbeing nothing if not \"scientific,\" the new religion tipped its wings with\nthe new time, and soared aloft in the name of \"Christian Science.\"\n\nIn a world not quite converted to this \"science,\" facts sometimes fall\nbehind assertions. But the sect of Christian Science now claims to number\nin its fold a million sheep. The \"mother church,\" of course, is in Boston;\nbut daughter churches of every age and size are budding and blooming\nthroughout the earth. At headquarters Christian Science has its official\nweekly organ, its official monthly magazine, and its official publishing\nhouse. The cult has issued innumerable books, but specially the\nmultifarious editions of _Science and Health_, the chief work of the\nadored \"mother\" and \"founder\" of Christian Science, Mrs. Mary Baker G.\nEddy. As the latest edition of this sacred book is always the best, and as\nthe holy author carefully recommends it as such to all the\nfaithful--whatever other editions they possess--its very high price, under\ncopyright,[1] as compared with undivine books, has rendered it a\nmagnificent source of income. Then, as the average fee for blessing a\ndisciple of Christian Science with a dozen lessons in \"metaphysics\" and\n\"healing\" has been three hundred dollars,[2] a grateful providence through\nlong years, has not only provided food and raiment for \"Mother Eddy,\" but\na rich abundance, too, of such worldly goods as should adorn and stimulate\nperfect piety, not excepting the whitest of diamonds, as symbols of\npurity, for herself and the elect of her household. Why not? Her devotees\nare strict adherents of Scripture--always as she interprets it for\nthem--and she believes, for all the text will yield, that \"the laborer is\nworthy of his hire.\"\n\nNow, apart from the name and the church of Christian Science, there are\nmany people in Boston and its universal radiations--very intelligent and\nhonest people, too--who utterly discard Mrs. Eddy and her teachings, yet\nhold the general doctrine on which she speculates--the now well-known\ndoctrine that mind governs matter, and that the soul can cure the body of\ndisease. The teaching of these people may simply be termed \"mental\nhealing,\" though they say also \"mental science,\" sometimes \"metaphysics\"\nand comprehensively \"the new thought.\"\n\nOf late much has been said and written against Christian Science; but\nadverse criticism has proceeded mostly from physicians in the interest of\ntheir schools and theologians in the interest of their creeds. These good\nsouls have taken Christian Science seriously, like the innocent followers\nof Mrs. Eddy herself. But as soon as a general investigator touches the\nfad, especially the history of it, he sees that, whatever its effects may\nhave been--good, bad or indifferent--it began in false pretenses,[3] has\nbeen pushed for money, and is one of the most shallow humbugs that ever\ntricked an epoch in the cloak of religion, or reduced \"metaphysics\" to\nlunacy. Hence our title. The Church of St. Bunco is the name for the\nthing. \"Christian Science,\" properly named, is simply _Un_-Christian\n_Non_-Science.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II.\n\nTHE ORIGIN OF THE NEW THOUGHT.[4]\n\n\n\"Christian Science,\" \"Mental Healing,\" \"Metaphysical Treatment of\nDisease,\"--where did these things come from, and how did they get here?\nThe facts are peculiar; they are partly unpleasant; they are sometimes\namusing; but they are not far to seek.\n\nIn 1836, Charles Poyan, a Frenchman, introduced into the United States the\npractise of Mesmerism. In 1840 it was taken up, with great earnestness, by\na Maine Yankee, named Phineas Parkhurst Quimby. He was a watch and clock\nmaker, an inventor, and a natural reformer. In making his mesmeric\nexperiments, he soon found an extraordinary subject of them in the person\nof a young man, Lucius Burkmar, with whom he traveled several years,\ngiving, it is said, some of the most astonishing exhibitions of mesmerism\nand clairvoyance that had ever been known. As the substance of mesmerism,\nthough under the newer name of hypnotism, has now been fully substantiated\nby the French Academy of Medicine, the highest authority in the world on\nsuch subjects, there seems to be no longer any reasonable question of its\ngeneral claims.\n\nOn taking up mesmerism in New England, Mr. Quimby had been very ill and\ngiven up by his physicians to die. By inquiring into his own condition\nthrough his clairvoyant subject, Lucius, and by the young man's laying-on\nof hands, Mr. Quimby, as he tells the story, recovered immediately from a\nlong-standing and dangerous malady. Partly as a result of this cure, but\nmuch more because his whole life shows him to have been a natural exemplar\nof \"the good physician,\" he took to \"healing the sick.\" He held no diploma\nfrom any college of medicine; but his work and his thousands of patients\ninevitably conferred upon him the title of \"Doctor.\"\n\nAt first he merely co-operated with the regular medical faculty, who\nsometimes called upon him to have his subject, Lucius, examine their\npatients. Being put into the mesmeric state, young Burkmar would describe\nthe disease, with the pains accompanying it, and would then go on and\nprescribe remedies, though he knew nothing about them.\n\nAs a participant and student of this process, Dr. Quimby came, in a short\ntime, to the conclusion that the diagnosis of the clairvoyant was not\nnecessarily the true one, but was taken from the belief of the patient, or\nhis physician, or some other person, and was, therefore, an impression of\nincidental mind, rather than a statement of fact. Such results would not\ndo for a man like Quimby; so he dismissed mesmerism--such practise of it\nat least as depended on anybody but himself and those on whom he directly\noperated. Meanwhile, according to the best of testimony, there was\ndeveloped in himself a faculty much more peculiar and effective than\nordinary \"mind-reading\" and \"second-sight.\" Gradually, too, he formed an\nentirely new and original theory of disease. In 1857, in a Maine paper,\nthe _Bangor Jeffersonian_, his faculty and his theory were described thus:\n\n\"It is universally acknowledged that the mind is often the cause of\ndisease, but it has never been supposed to have an equal power in\novercoming it. Quimby's theory is that the mind gives immediate form to\nthe animal spirit, and that the animal spirit gives form to the body....\nTherefore, his first course in the treatment of a patient is to sit down\nbeside him, and put himself _en rapport_ with him, which he does without\nproducing the mesmeric sleep.... With the spirit form Dr. Quimby converses\nand endeavors to win it away from its grief; and, when he has succeeded in\ndoing so, it disappears, and reunites with the body. Thus is commenced the\nfirst step towards recovery.... This union frequently lasts but a short\ntime, when the spirit again appears, exhibiting some new phase of its\ntroubles. With this he again contends until he overcomes it, when it\ndisappears as before. Thus two shades of trouble have disappeared from the\nmind, and consequently from the animal spirit; and the body has already\ncommenced its efforts to come into a state in accordance with them.\"\n\nIn an article written by Dr. Quimby himself (in 1861), he explained his\nprocedure in this way:\n\n\"A patient comes to see Dr. Quimby. He renders himself absent to\neverything but the impression of the person's feelings. These are quickly\ndaguerreotyped on him. They contain no intelligence, but shadow forth a\nreflection of themselves which he looks at. This contains the disease as\nit appears to the patient. Being confident that it is the shadow of a\nfalse idea, he (Dr. Quimby) is not afraid of it.... Then his feelings in\nregard to the disease, which are health and strength, are daguerreotyped\non the receptive plate of the patient, which also throws forth a shadow.\nThe patient, seeing this shadow of the disease in a new light, gains\nconfidence. This change of feeling is daguerreotyped on the doctor again.\nThis also throws forth a shadow, and he sees the change, and continues to\ntreat it in the same way. So the patient's feelings sympathize with his,\nthe shadow changes and grows dim, and finally disappears. The light takes\nits place, and there is nothing left of the disease.\"\n\nDr. Quimby was not an educated man in the technical meaning of the term;\nbut, through his experiments in mesmerism and his personal experiences, he\nwas led directly to what in the history of philosophy is called \"absolute\nidealism.\" Until his own conclusions were fully reached, he knew nothing,\nfrom literature, even of Berkeley; but when Berkeley's writings were\nunfolded to him, he at once said, in his plain, straightforward way, that\nthey were true, and that he \"agreed\" with them. To him, the universe was\nmind, and all things were \"ideas.\" Disease was an \"idea,\" though he\nsometimes called it \"matter,\" as being _negative mind_, or that which\n\"_could receive impressions_\" and \"be changed by them.\" Hence he said:\n\n\"The idea (disease) is matter; and it decomposes, and throws off an odor\nthat contains all the ideas of the person affected. This is true of every\nidea or thought. Now my odor comes in contact with this odor, and I, being\nwell, have found out by twenty years' experience that these odors affect\nme, and also that they contain the very identity of the patient whom this\nodor surrounds. This called my attention to it; and I found that it was as\neasy to tell the feelings or thoughts of a sick person as to detect the\nodor of spirits from that of tobacco. I at first thought I inhaled it, but\nat last found that my senses could be affected by it when my body was at a\ndistance of many miles from the patient. This led to a new discovery; and\nI found that my senses were not in my body, but that my body was in my\nsenses. My knowledge located my senses just according to my wisdom. If a\nman's knowledge is in matter, all there is of him is contained in matter.\nBut, if his knowledge is in wisdom, then his senses and all there is of\nhim are out of matter.\"\n\nIn 1860 Dr. Quimby used, in Portland and vicinity, a circular addressed\n\"to the sick,\" some copies of which have been preserved, and from an\noriginal copy of which the following extracts are taken:\n\n\"Dr. P. P. Quimby would respectfully announce that he will attend to those\nwishing to consult him in regard to their health, and, as his practice is\nunlike all other medical practice, it is necessary to say that he gives no\nmedicine _and makes no outward applications_, but simply sits down by the\npatients, tells them their feelings, &c., then his explanation is the\ncure; and, if he succeeds in correcting their error, he changes the fluids\nof the system and establishes the truth, or health. _The Truth is the\nCure._ This mode of treatment applies to all cases. If no explanation is\ngiven, no charge is made, for no effect is produced.... If patients feel\npain they know it, and, if he describes their pain, he feels it.... After\nthis it becomes his duty to prove to them the cause of their trouble....\nThis has been his mode of practice for the last seventeen years. For the\npast eight years he has given no medicines, nor made any outward\napplications.... There are many who pretend to practice as he does; but\nwhen a person, while in a trance, claims any power from the spirits of the\ndeparted, and recommends any kind of medicine to be taken internally or\napplied externally, beware! Believe them not, 'for by their fruits ye\nshall know them.'\"[5]\n\nIn 1887 a short account of Dr. Quimby and his work was published in a\npamphlet entitled _The True History of Mental Science_, by Julius A.\nDresser. Mr. Dresser had been a patient and friend of Dr. Quimby, who had\nlooked to him to cultivate and extend the Quimby system. But the immediate\naccomplishment of that purpose had been prevented.\n\nIn 1895 Mrs. Annetta Gertrude Dresser, the wife of Julius A. Dresser, and,\nlike him, a patient and personal friend of Dr. Quimby, gave to the public\na small but comprehensive volume, _The Philosophy of Dr. P. P. Quimby_.[6]\nThis excellent sketch of the man and his career contains part of an\narticle upon him written by his son, Mr. George A. Quimby, for the _New\nEngland Magazine_ of March, 1888, the article being followed, in Mrs.\nDresser's book, by various newspaper notices and criticisms of Dr. Quimby,\nrunning from 1857 to 1863, then by reminiscences of him, an exposition of\nhis theories, and by selections from his manuscripts.\n\nThe newspaper articles were mostly prepared by grateful patients whom Dr.\nQuimby had restored from sickness to health.[7] Among these patients were\ntwo daughters of Judge Ashur Ware[8] of Portland, Maine, one of whom, Mrs.\nSarah Ware Mackay, still lives to bless the good Doctor's memory. The Ware\nsisters became so deeply interested in Dr. Quimby's thoughts and cures\nthat they persuaded him to write out his ideas and explain his practise.\nAs he was exceedingly busy, his articles were rewritten by the two young\nladies or by Mr. George A. Quimby, and were then submitted to the Doctor\nfor correction. His terminology was peculiar, and sometimes inadequate to\nhis meaning; but due attention to his writings, with those of his friends,\nyields a clear conception of him.\n\nOne thing will never be questioned by any honest and sensible person\nacquainted with the facts: Dr. Quimby's biographers--his son and his\ntrusted friends, the Dressers--have told the truth about him. The\ninformation they give fully sustains their general estimate. This estimate\nestablished, we know that Dr. Quimby himself was absolutely sincere, and\ncould be fully trusted just so far as he understood his own nature and\nwhat he was doing. But this is not to say that he was always right. It is\nnot even to say that he was without the strongest of prejudices, which may\nsometimes have misled him. He was too broad and high a soul to be\n_opinionated_ in any narrow, selfish sense; but he would stand for a\nconviction till \"the crack of doom.\" \"The old gentleman,\" says one who\nknew him familiarly for many years, \"would _argue_ a sitting hen off her\nnest.\"\n\nReference has been made to his ill-health when he began to study\nmesmerism. Physicians had told him that his \"kidneys were partially\nconsumed,\" and that he had \"ulcers on his lungs.\"\n\n\"On one occasion [he says], when I had my subject asleep, he told me that\none [of my kidneys] was half consumed, and a piece three inches long had\nseparated from it, and was only connected by a slender thread. This was\nwhat I believed to be true; for it agreed with what the doctors told me,\nand with what I had suffered--for I had not been free from pain for years.\nMy common sense told me that no medicine would ever cure the trouble, and\ntherefore I must suffer till death relieved me. But I asked [my subject]\nif there was no remedy. He replied, 'Yes--I can put the piece on so it\nwill grow, and you will get well.'... He placed his hands upon me, and\nsaid he united the pieces so they would grow. The next day he said they\nhad grown together; and from that day I never experienced the least pain\nfrom them.\"[9]\n\nDr. Quimby's personal veracity being accepted by the present writer as\nunimpeachable, his word must be taken as perfectly good for this\nremarkable story, as he understood the matter. But the various inferences\nhe drew from his case may be questioned, with no disadvantage to his\ncharacter.\n\n\"I concluded\" [said he], \"that [the subject] read my mind; and _his ideas\nwere so absurd_ that _the disease vanished by the absurdity of the\ncure_.\"\n\nIt appears that this mesmeric subject, though he could be forced, under\ncontrol, to prescribe anything in the mind of the operator, always did\nprescribe, if left to himself, some very simple remedy.\n\n\"When I mesmerized my subject,\" says Dr. Quimby, \"he would prescribe some\nlittle simple herb that would do no harm or good of itself. In some cases\nthis would cure the patient. I also found that any medicine would cure\ncertain cases if he ordered it. This led me to investigate the matter, and\narrive at the stand that the cure is not in the medicine, but in the\nconfidence of the doctor or medium.\"\n\nIn his early invalid life, Dr. Quimby had been \"filled,\" he tells us, with\n\"calomel\" and other \"strong doses of allopathic poison.\" As we read his\ndescription of Lucius and the \"simple herbs,\" the thought arises that the\nmesmeric subject might have had some power or aid after all, that his good\noperator passed over too cavalierly, and that the \"herbs\" might have\nappeared more efficacious, if a reminiscence of vigorous \"blue pills,\" in\nwhich Dr. Quimby once had confidence, had not still dwelt on his tongue.\nIt is certain that, since his time, some very sensible persons believe\nthey have been cured of so dire an affliction as cancer by so innocent a\nconcoction as clover tea.\n\nDr. Quimby, to use the language of his first biographer, Mr. Dresser,\n\"progressed gradually out of mesmerism, into a knowledge of the hidden\npowers of mind; and he soon found in man a principle, or a power, that was\nnot of man himself, but was higher than man, and of which he could only be\na medium. Its character was goodness and intelligence; and its power was\ngreat. He also found that disease was nothing but an erroneous belief of\nmind.... On this discovery he founded a system of treating the sick, and\nfounded a science of life.... His discovery was not made from the Bible,\nbut from natural phenomena and searching investigation.... After the truth\nwas discovered, he found his new views all portrayed and illustrated in\nChrist's teachings and works.\"\n\nSome of these claims were reaffirmed by Dr. Quimby himself, in a letter\nwritten in 1860.[10]\n\n\"You inquire [he says] if I have ever cured any cases of chronic\nrheumatism. I answer, Yes; but ... you cannot be saved by pinning your\nfaith on another's sleeve. Every one must answer for his own sins or\nbelief. Our beliefs are the cause of our misery, and our happiness or\nmisery is what follows our belief.... You ask if my practice belongs to\nany known science. My answer is, No; it belongs to a Wisdom that is above\nman as man.... It was taught eighteen hundred years ago, and has never had\na place in the heart of man since, but is in the world, and the world\nknows it not.\"\n\nIn _The Philosophy of P. P. Quimby_, we are told that\n\n\"It was Dr. Quimby's chief aim to establish a science of life and\nhappiness, which all could learn, and which should relieve humanity of\nsickness and misery.\"\n\nBut after our various quotations, we can readily perceive, as his\nbiographer maintains, that \"by the word, 'science,'\" he always meant \"not\nwhat is commonly understood by that word, but something spiritual.\" By\n\"science,\" in short, or what he sometimes called \"Wisdom,\" Dr. Quimby\nmeant simply the principle of the universe, the presence, truth and power\nof God, at the foundation of the human soul.\n\nDr. Quimby said, and his disciples have said after him, that he \"never\nwent into any trance,\" and was \"a strong disbeliever in _Spiritualism_, as\nunderstood by that name.\" Pursuing this statement in detail, we find that\nhis criticism of the subject consisted mostly in his denying the accuracy\nof information derived from clairvoyants and spirit-mediums. But, in the\nwords of one of his most intimate friends, he considered our two states of\nphysical and spiritual life as \"only a difference in dissolving views,\"\nand he believed that his own thought and senses existed, a part of the\ntime, out of matter, or in \"the scientific world.\"[11] He even affirmed,\nin connection with his view of disease as an impression of mind, that,\ntransferring himself into the spiritual state of existence, he had cured\nhis own parents, _after death_, of ailments which had not left them when\nthey departed from their physical condition. To this strange man, Dr.\nQuimby, the world of matter and the world of spirit were so interblended\nas to be only two phases of the same thing, _both of which he constantly\nexperienced_.\n\n\"What,\" he asks, \"is this body that we see?\" It is \"a tenement for man to\noccupy _when he pleases_. But, as a man knows not himself, he reasons as\nthough he were one of the fixtures of his house, or body.... What is the\ntrue definition of death. Death is the name of an idea.... So the\ndestruction of an idea is death.\" Man \"is dying and living all the time to\nerror, till he dies the death of all his opinions and beliefs. Therefore\nto be free from death is to be alive in truth.\" In no other way than this,\nwould Dr. Quimby even recognize such a fact as death. When he came to die\nhimself, he said \"I am perfectly willing for the _change_.... But I know\nthat I shall be _right here with you, just the same as I have always\nbeen_. I do not dread the change any more than if I were going on a trip\nto Philadelphia.\"\n\nDr. Quimby, then, in his own way, certainly did believe, accept and avow\nwhat is commonly understood as Spiritualism, but he repudiated its\nfrequently doubtful accompaniments.\n\n\"I know [said he] just how much reliance can be placed on a medium; for\nwhen in the mesmeric state, they are governed by the superstition and\nbeliefs of the person they are in communication with.... The capacity of\nthought-reading is the common extent of mesmerism. Clairvoyance is very\nrare.... This state is of very short duration. They then come into that\nstate where they are governed by surrounding minds. All the mediums of\nthis day reason about medicine as much as the regular physician. _They\nbelieve in disease and recommend medicine._\"\n\nHere we have it, exactly. Dr. Quimby did _not_ believe in disease, except\nas \"an error of mind,\" and did _not_ recommend medicine. So, while he\naccepted spirit-condition, to the fullest extent, he refused to accept\ninformation from it at second hand. He held that, because a man had\n\"passed over to the other side,\" as the Spiritualists say, he was not\nnecessarily any wiser than he had been in \"mind reduced to a state called\nmatter.\"\n\n\"The invisible world [said he] opens all the avenues of matter, through\nwhich to give the inhabitants communications; but the natural man has\npossession of the mediums, so that the scientific man is misrepresented in\nnine-tenths of all he says. Now to be in the scientific world is not\nnecessarily to be wise, but to acknowledge a wisdom above the natural man,\nwhich will enter the world where wisdom sees through matter. This is the\ncondition of those persons who are thrown into a clairvoyant state. To\nthem, matter is nothing but an idea, that is seen or not, just as it is\ncalled out. All their senses are in this state, but are under the control\nof the natural man.... The explanation of the scientific world is given by\nthese blind guides ... who cannot understand science.\"\n\nFrom this last quotation, we can see precisely how Dr. Quimby at once\naccepted and rejected Spiritualism; and we can see, as well, how he\nreached the posture of rational idealism. As far as concerned his powers\nor gifts, the good man was what would now be called a \"mesmerist,\" a\n\"clairvoyant,\" and a \"healing medium\"--only he was of so sensitive a\nspiritual nature that he could exercise these faculties \"in his senses,\"\nor in what, _to him_, was \"a perfectly normal state.\" If, to his own\ndirect vision and experience, \"matter\" was \"nothing but an idea,\" to be\n\"seen or not, just as it is called out,\" his conclusion could only be that\n\"all that is seen by the natural man is mind reduced to a state called\nmatter,\" and that \"there is no matter independent of mind, or life.\"\n\nBut even if granting this posture as a philosophical premise, is it a\nlogical conclusion to insist, with Dr. Quimby, that disease is merely \"a\nbelief,\" and that \"health is wisdom?\"\n\n\"I deny disease as a truth,\" said he, but \"admit it as a deception.\nDisease is an evil that follows taking an opinion for a truth. Every\ndisease is an invention of man, and has no identity in wisdom.... Disease\nis the misery of our belief, happiness is the health of our wisdom....\nFalse reasoning is sickness and death.... The devil is the error of\nmankind.... We are made up of truth and error. Disease is an error, or\nbelief; the Truth is the cure.\"\n\nIt is necessary to explain, however, that Dr. Quimby found the cause of\nhuman misery \"not alone in the conscious mind\" and the \"opinions and\nbeliefs about disease,\" but in the \"mental influences and thoughts by\nwhich every person is surrounded,\" and in the \"unconscious or subconscious\nmind.\" He declared that he could tell \"an idea or cause\" of sickness from\nthe sensation produced by it, \"just as a person knows an orange by the\nodor.\" As he \"was able to do this,\" says Mr. Dresser, \"he always told the\npatient, at the first sitting, what the latter thought was his disease,\nand never allowed the patient to tell him anything about the case.\"\n\nIn a later chapter of our book, the hypothesis that because, in the last\nanalysis \"all things are mind,\" all disease can be cured by mind _while it\nexists in the body_, will be carefully considered. Meanwhile it must be\nadmitted, without reserve, that under this doctrine, which Dr. Quimby\nhimself believed with all his might, he practised \"healing,\" for many\nyears, with marvelous success.\n\nHe labored, too, under great difficulties. Fifty years ago, the average\ninhabitant of New England was not quite so bigoted and superstitious,\nperhaps, as the Jews in the time of Christ, but quite enough so to\nsuggest a comparison. Dr. Quimby was not orthodox in his theology, and was\nstill less orthodox in medicine. As Mr. Dresser records the situation,\n\n\"[Those] who were then willing to try a practitioner outside of the\nmedical schools, were persons who had exhausted every means of help within\nthose schools, and, when finally booked for the grave, would send or go to\nQuimby.\"\n\nIn the way of a \"grim joke,\" the Doctor himself said that his patients\n\"would send for him and the undertaker at the same time, and the one who\ngot there first would get the case.\" And the worst of it all was that his\npower, when acknowledged, was frequently \"imputed to the devil.\" Still, he\nhad more work than he could do--so much that it wore him completely out,\nand finally ended his life at the age of sixty-four. In his busiest days,\nhe said:\n\n\"I have sat with more than three hundred individuals every year for ten\nyears, and for the last five years I have averaged five hundred\nyearly--people with all sorts of diseases, and every possible state of\nmind, brought on by all kinds of ideas in which people believe. Religion\nin its various forms embraces many of these causes. Some cases have been\noccasioned by the idea that [the patients] had committed the unpardonable\nsin. When asked what it was, no two persons ever answered alike.\"\n\nThere is no doubt that Dr. Quimby's patients were generally cured, unless\nhe told them at once that they were past his or any other mortal aid. \"He\nsaw through them at a glance,\" as all who knew him agree in testifying. To\ndeceive him was impossible. For instance: A lady who scouted his special\nvision, and was in good health, went to him feigning illness, and for the\npurpose of a test. \"He received her, as he would any one, and, after a few\nmoments, without a word having been spoken, took his chair, and, placing\nit before her, sat down with his back to her, saying: 'That is the way you\nfeel toward me. I think you don't need my services, and had better go\nhome.'\" A patient and friend--an eye-witness of unquestionable\nveracity--says:\n\n\"People were coming to Dr. Quimby from all parts of New England. Many of\nthese came on crutches, or were assisted into the office; and it was most\ninteresting to note their progress day by day, or the remarkable change\nproduced by a single sitting.... I remember one lady who had used crutches\nfor twenty years, who walked without them after a few weeks.\"\n\nThere is now living in Boston a gentleman who happens to be personally\nknown to the present writer. The gentleman is a college graduate of high\nculture, of large experience, and with the rest, is an author of\ndistinction. When a young man he had a serious affliction of the eyes,\nwhich gradually increased until he was threatened with blindness. He was a\nman of means, and no expense was spared to secure the best medical\ntreatment. It was unavailing. He heard of Dr. Quimby, and, as the usual\n\"last resort,\" applied to him. \"He cured me,\" says the gentleman, \"and I\nhave had no trouble since. But how he did it I don't know. He sat and\ntalked with me, and sometimes touched my head and face with his hands,\nmoistened with cold water, though declaring even this to be of no vital\nconsequence. He cured other people of all sorts of things, as easily as\nhe cured me. Here I am with two good eyes, and you have the facts.\"[12]\n\nThe ultimate value of \"The New Thought,\" or \"Mental and Moral Healing,\" is\nyet a problem; but that P. P. Quimby was the spring and fountain of the\nwhole stream, with its various branches, is beyond all reputable dispute.\nIt rests on these grounds:\n\n_First._ He claimed it himself in the presence of all whom he met,\nspreading the claim broadcast even in newspaper advertisements and\nbusiness circulars.\n\n_Second._ Many of the most intelligent and trustworthy of his patients\nbecame, as we have seen, correspondents of the press to express their\ngratitude for his cures, and scores of their articles have been preserved.\nWith no exception, these articles substantiate Dr. Quimby's declaration\nthat he alone, of all persons then living, treated disease through the\nnormal action of the human mind.\n\n_Third._ Dr. Quimby had a son, Mr. George A. Quimby, who acted for years\nas his father's secretary. This gentleman is living, and is a well and\nwidely known citizen of Belfast, Maine. His distinct claim for Dr. Quimby\nis that \"up to his time, no man, since Jesus, had attempted and succeeded\nin curing the sick, without medicine, applications, mesmerism, hypnotism\nor spiritualism, simply mentally--through the mind and sense--and who\nfurther claimed that he did it in a scientific manner which could be\ntaught to others, ... and was in a normal state of mind all the time, as\nalso was his patient.\"\n\n_Fourth._ A number of Dr. Quimby's patients and close friends long\nsurvived him, and several of them still live. With a single exception,\nevery one of these people has said, in substance, exactly what Mr. George\nA. Quimby states in detail.\n\n_Fifth._ The single exception is a lady who once said what all the rest\nsay--and who _is completely on record as saying it_--but who, for reasons\neasy to understand and explain, has since taken a lady's high and mighty\nprivilege of \"changing her mind.\" We will inspect this change.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III.\n\nDR. QUIMBY'S MOST DISTINGUISHED PATIENT.\n\n\nDr. Quimby was at the height of his career during the early days of our\nCivil War. Among his patients at that time was one who has since become\nthe most celebrated of them, and who now bears the name of Mary Baker\nGlover Eddy. Then, however, the patient was known as Mary M. Patterson--an\nincident which occurred through her being a very energetic and pious\nwoman, who has attracted to herself a considerable variety of\nhusbands.[13] It was in 1862, says Dr. Quimby's biographer, Mrs. A. G.\nDresser, \"that Mrs. Eddy, author of _Science and Health_, was associated\nwith Dr. Quimby; and I well remember the very day when she was helped up\nthe steps of his office on the occasion of her first visit. She was cured\nby him, and afterward became very much interested in his theory. But she\nput her own construction on much of his teaching, and developed a system\nof thought which differed radically from it.\"\n\nMrs. Mary Baker G. Patterson (since Mrs. Eddy), was greatly surprised at\nher cure, and naturally grateful for it. She at once said so in print. It\nwas in an issue of the Portland Evening _Courier_, of November 7th, 1862.\nHer account was this:\n\n\"Three weeks ago I quitted my nurse and sick-room _en route_ for Portland.\nThe belief of my recovery had died out of the hearts of those who were\nmost anxious for it. With this mental and physical depression, I first\nvisited P. P. Quimby, and in less than one week from that time I ascended\nby a stairway of one-hundred and eighty-two steps to the dome of the City\nHall, and am improving _ad infinitum_.... I have employed\nelectro-magnetism and animal magnetism, and for a brief period I have felt\nrelief ... but in no instance did I get rid of a return of all my\nailments, because I had not been helped out of the error in which opinions\ninvolve us. My operator believed in disease independent of mind; hence I\ncould not be wiser than my teacher. But now I can see, dimly at first, and\nonly as trees walking, the great principle which underlies Dr. Quimby's\nfaith and works; and just in proportion to my right perception of truth is\nmy recovery. This truth, which he opposes to the error of giving\nintelligence to matter and placing pain where it never placed itself, if\nreceived understandingly, changes the currents of the system to their\nnormal action, and the mechanism of the body goes on undisturbed. That\nthis is a science capable of demonstration becomes clear to the minds of\nthose patients who reason upon the process of their cure. The truth which\nhe establishes in the patient cures him (although he may be wholly\nunconscious thereof), and the body, which is full of light, is no longer\nin disease.\"\n\nThe communication of Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy--then Mrs. Mary M.\nPatterson--which she published in the Portland _Courier_, was criticised,\nthe next day, November 8th, 1862, by the Portland _Advertiser_. In reply\nto that paper she said:\n\n\"P. P. Quimby stands upon the plain of wisdom with his truth. Christ\nhealed the sick, but not by jugglery or with drugs. As the former speaks\nas never man before spake, and heals as never man healed since Christ, is\nhe not identified with truth, and is not this the Christ which is in\nhim?... P. P. Quimby rolls away the stone from the sepulcher of error, and\nhealth is the resurrection.... But light shineth in darkness, and the\ndarkness comprehendeth it not.\"[14]\n\nDr. Quimby having died on the 16th of January, 1866, Mrs. M. B. G.\nPatterson--not to be Mrs. M. B. G. Patterson Eddy until 1867--\"sent to\nme,\" says Mr. Julius Dresser in his _True History of Mental Science_, \"a\ncopy of a poem she had written to his memory.\" With the poem was sent the\nfollowing letter:\n\n    LYNN, February 15, 1866.\n\n    MR. DRESSER:\n\n    \"_Sir_,--I enclose some lines of mine in memory of our much loved\n    friend, which perhaps _you_ will not think overwrought in meaning:\n    _others_ must, of course.\n\n    \"I am constantly wishing that _you_ would step forward into the place\n    he has vacated. I believe you would do a vast amount of good, and are\n    more capable of occupying his place than any other I know of.\n\n    \"Two weeks ago I fell on the sidewalk and struck my back on the ice\n    and was taken up for dead, came to consciousness amid a storm of\n    vapors from cologne, chloroform, ether, camphor, etc., but to find\n    myself the helpless cripple I was before I saw Dr. Quimby.\n\n    \"The physician attending said I had taken the last step I ever should,\n    but in two days I got out of my bed _alone_, and _will_ walk; but yet\n    I confess I am frightened, and out of that nervous heat my friends are\n    forming, spite of me, the terrible spinal affection from which I have\n    suffered so long and hopelessly.... Now can't _you_ help me? I believe\n    you can. I write this with this feeling: I think that I could help\n    another in my condition if they had not placed their intelligence in\n    matter. This I have not done, and yet I am slowly failing. Won't you\n    write me if you will undertake for me if I can get to you?...\n\n    \"Respectfully,\n      \"MARY M. PATTERSON.\"\n\nThe poem by the lady destined to become Mrs. Eddy, author of _Science and\nHealth_, was published by her, with her name attached, under the caption\nof\n\n    \"LINES on the death of Dr. P. P. Quimby, _who healed with the Truth\n    that Christ taught, in contradistinction to all Isms_.\"\n\n    \"Did sackcloth clothe the sun, and day grow night,\n      All matter mourn the hour with dewy eyes,\n    When Truth, receding from our mortal sight,\n      Had paid to error her last sacrifice?\n\n    \"Can we forget the power that gave us life?\n      Shall we forget the wisdom of its way?\n    Then ask me not amid this mortal strife--\n      This keenest pang of animated clay--\n\n    \"To mourn him less: to mourn him more were just,\n      If to his memory 'twere a tribute given\n    For every solemn, sacred, earnest trust\n      Delivered to us ere he rose to heaven--\n\n    \"Heaven but the happiness of that calm soul,\n      Growing in stature to the throne of God.\n    Rest should reward him who hath made us whole,\n      Seeking, tho' tremblers, where his footsteps trod.\"\n                                    MARY M. PATTERSON.\n\nThe complete identity of Mrs. Mary M. Patterson with Mrs. Mary Baker G.\nEddy has been fully established by the highest Christian-Science\nauthority in the world--Mrs. Eddy herself. In a letter dated March 7th,\n1883, addressed to the Boston _Post_, she said:\n\n\"In 1862 my name was Patterson, my husband, Dr. Patterson, a distinguished\ndentist. After our marriage I was confined to my bed with a severe\nillness, and seldom left bed or room for seven years, when I was taken to\nDr. Quimby and partially restored. I returned home, hoping once more to\nmake that home happy, but only returned to a new agony to find that my\nhusband had eloped with a married woman from one of the wealthy families\nof that city, leaving no trace save his last letter to us, wherein he\nwrote: 'I hope some time to be worthy of so good a wife.' I have a bill of\ndivorce from him....\"\n\nIn her letter to the Boston _Post_ Mrs. Eddy made some other interesting\nassertions. She said:[15]\n\n    \"We never were a student of Dr. Quimby. Dr. Quimby never had students\n    to our knowledge. He was somewhat of a remarkable healer, and at the\n    time we knew him he was known as a mesmerist. We were one of his\n    patients.\"\n\nWhat an astonishing look these statements by Mrs. Eddy in 1883 have, when\ncompared with the statements of Mrs. Mary M. Patterson from 1862 to 1866.\nLet us see.--\n\n    _Statement of 1883._\n\n    \"At the time we knew him [Dr. Quimby], he was known as a mesmerist.\"\n\n\n    _Statement of 1866._\n\n    \"Dr. Quimby healed with the truth that Christ taught, in\n    contradistinction to all Isms.\"\n\n    \"Rest should reward him who hath made us whole, _seeking, tho'\n    tremblers, where his footsteps trod_.\"\n\nOn March 7th, 1883, Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy made, in the Boston Post.\n\n    _This Statement._\n\n    \"We had laid the foundation of mental healing long before we ever saw\n    Dr. Quimby.... We made our first experiments in mental healing about\n    1853, when we were convinced that mind had a science which, if\n    understood, would heal all diseases.\"\n\nIn October, 1862, the same lady, through the Portland _Courier_, made\n\n    _This Statement._\n\n    \"I can see, _dimly at first and as trees walking_, the great principle\n    which underlies Dr. Quimby's faith and works; and just in proportion\n    to my right perception of truth is my recovery. This truth, which he\n    opposes to _the error of giving intelligence to matter_, changes the\n    currents of the system. The truth which he establishes in the patient\n    cures him. This is a science capable of demonstration to those who\n    reason upon the process.\"\n\nThen, in the Portland _Advertiser_, came Mrs. Eddy's extraordinary\ncomparison of Dr. Quimby's words and deeds with those of Christ, and\n\n    _This Statement._\n\n    \"P. P. Quimby rolls away the stone from the sepulcher of error, and\n    health is the resurrection.\"\n\nOn the publication of Julius A. Dresser's _True History of Mental\nScience_--to which reference has been made in our previous chapter--Mrs.\nEddy was greatly exercised over it. In her _Christian Science Journal_ for\nJune, 1887, she devoted the leading article, under her own name, to the\nDresser pamphlet.\n\nThis little thing was a calm statement of facts, proved as they were\ngiven. From the facts, Dr. Quimby's theory was drawn, and Mr. Dresser\nfrankly recounted what the general reader would consider Dr. Quimby's\nfoibles and prejudices, as well as his doctrines and gifts. The pamphlet\ncontained Mrs. Mary M. Patterson's opinion of Dr. Quimby in 1862, and her\npoem of 1866. It agreed with what was then the substance of her own\nassertions, by summarizing Dr. Quimby \"as the first person of this age who\npenetrated the depths of truth so far as to discover and bring forth a\ntrue science of life, and openly apply it to the healing of the sick.\"\n\nBut, in criticising Mr. Dresser's quiet monograph, the amiable \"Mother of\nChristian Science,\" proclaimed that Mr. Dresser had \"let loose the dogs of\nwar.\"; had unleashed a \"pet poodle,\" alternately \"to bark and whine\" at\nher \"heels\"; and she identified the \"pet poodle\" with a certain \"sucking\nlitterateur,\" who had renounced allegiance to her.[16] But when her\npreliminary high-tide had ebbed a little, her pen dropped this:\n\n\"Did I write those articles in Mr. Dresser's pamphlet, purporting to be\nmine? I might have written them, twenty or thirty years ago, for I was\nunder the mesmeric treatment of Dr. Quimby from 1862 until his death, in\n1865. He was illiterate, and knew nothing then of the science of\nMind-healing; and I was as ignorant of mesmerism as Eve before she was\ntempted by the serpent.\"\n\nThose Patterson-Eddy \"articles,\" then--no possible mendacity being\nadequate to their extinction--have been grudgingly and angrily admitted by\ntheir author to be genuine. But she would ignore them on the ground of\n\"mesmerism.\" Her \"head,\" she says, \"was so turned by Animal Magnetism and\nwill power\" under Dr. Quimby's treatment, that she \"might have written\nsomething as hopelessly incorrect\" as the articles referred to.\n\nBut _was_ Mrs. Mary M. Patterson under \"mesmeric treatment,\" or _did_ Mrs.\nMary Patterson Eddy ever really _believe_ she was under such treatment,\nwhen with Dr. Quimby? And was she then a truly \"ignorant Eve,\" without a\nfig-leaf of knowledge pertaining to mesmerism? In 1862 she thought _not_,\nand we have seen that, in writing her first newspaper letter on Dr.\nQuimby, she turned her thought into these words:\n\n\"I _have employed electro-magnetism and animal magnetism_, and for a brief\nperiod I have felt relief ... but in no instance did I get rid of a return\nof all my ailments, _because I had not been helped out of the error in\nwhich opinions involve us. My operator believed in disease independent of\nmind; hence I could not be wiser than my teacher._\"\n\nMrs. Patterson continued her letter by saying what has already been quoted\nin full--that Dr. Quimby cured her by \"a great principle\" of \"science,\"\nthrough which he established \"the truth\" in \"the patient\"--a truth which\nhe opposed to the error of giving intelligence to matter, and placing pain\nwhere it never placed itself.\n\nIn Mrs. Eddy's magazine article of June, 1887, she went so far as to say\nof Dr. Quimby,\n\n\"His healing was never _considered_ or _called_ anything but Mesmerism.\"\n\nWell, Mrs. Mary M. Patterson, from 1862 to 1866, both \"considered\" and\n\"called\" the Doctor's healing something wholly different from mesmerism;\nand, saying it was done \"by the truth which Christ taught,\" she considered\nand called it something \"in contradistinction to _all_ Isms.\"\n\nMeanwhile, for more than three years of Mrs. Eddy's close acquaintance\nwith Dr. Quimby, all his advertisements, even, told her, what she then\nfluently repeated, that he cured disease by implanting _truth_ in the\nhuman mind, in place of _error_--\"the truth being the cure.\" In other\nwords, everything around her proclaimed that Dr. Quimby's cures were\nperformed wholly by Mind-healing.\n\nMrs. Eddy's reversal of herself has been so agile and exhaustive since\nher comparisons of Dr. Quimby with our Lord Jesus Christ, that she has\nlatterly preferred to speak of the good old doctor, who taught and healed\nher, as \"unlearned\"--a \"mesmerist\" who cured a patient by \"rubbing\"\nher--an \"illiterate\" man who said that he was only \"John\" while she was\n\"Jesus,\" and whose \"scribblings\" she, to a considerable extent, wrote\nherself. From all this it must be adduced that Mrs. Eddy, in her Patterson\ndays, went to Dr. Quimby to be cured of disease, but taught him to do it.\n\nIt is true, as we have noted, that Dr. Quimby was not an educated man, in\nthe sense of the schools. It would have been impossible for him to write\nlike Mrs. Eddy. When, for instance, she excogitated that first letter of\nMrs. Patterson's to the Portland _Courier_, she opened it in this way:\n\n\"When our Shakespeare decided that there were more things in this world\n'than were dreamed of in your philosophy,' I cannot say of a verity that\nhe had a foreknowledge of P. P. Quimby. And when the school Platonic\nanatomized the soul and divided it into halves, to be united by elementary\nattractions, and heathen philosophers averred that old Chaos in sullen\nsilence brooded o'er the earth until her inimitable form was hatched from\nthe egg of night, I would not at present decide whether the fallacy was\nfound in their premises or conclusions, never having dated my existence\nbefore the flood.\"\n\nNo: P. P. Quimby, even if aided by all the freshmen and sophomores that\never lived, could never have risen into the state of gorgeous, ponderous\nculture evinced in the foregoing power-house and epitome of all learning.\nBesides, when that incomparable paragraph was erected, Mrs. Eddy was\nyoung--not yet fifty years of age. At sixty, her literary _style_ had lost\nsomething of its dazzle; but, in _matter_, all her work, especially her\nworld-renowned book, _Science and Health_, compares beautifully with her\ngrand production of 1862.\n\nP. P. Quimby was a plain man of great natural genius. When he\nwrote--generally in great haste--he paid little attention to capital\nletters, punctuation, or _form_ of any kind; but his manuscripts were\ncarefully revised, under his own direction, by his two faithful friends,\nthe Ware sisters, or by his son, Mr. George A. Quimby. Mrs. Mary M.\nPatterson borrowed and read some occasional jotting--that was all. In the\npossession of Mr. George A. Quimby are eight hundred pages of his father's\nwritings, prepared before Dr. Quimby had the honor of knowing that Mrs.\nPatterson (to be Eddy) was on the face of the earth. These writings\ncontain the substance of all his thoughts.\n\nThe knowledge that such writings exist has much disturbed Mrs. Mary Baker\nGlover Patterson Eddy. On the 21st of May, 1887, she published, through a\nBoston newspaper, an offer to print the Quimby manuscripts, at her own\nexpense, _provided_ she should \"first _be allowed to examine said\nmanuscripts_,\" and to see that \"they were his own compositions,\" not\n_hers_, which _she_ \"had left with him many years ago.\"\n\nNow Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy, author of _Science and Health_, filled with\n\"immortal mind\" and the only \"divine science\" ever \"demonstrated,\" is of\ncourse an honest woman. Many delightful innocents of all sizes would take\nher word for anything she promised. There is not a single member of her\nChurch-Scientist who is not sure that her little hatchet is infinitely\ncleaner and brighter than George Washington's. Still, the possessors of\nthe Quimby manuscripts, not yet having teetered themselves above all\n\"earthly wisdom,\" would rather not trust her with their property.\n\nA few years ago, the eldest of Dr. Quimby's two devoted friends, the Ware\nsisters, passed away. With the younger sister she left the following\nstatement, in the form of an affidavit, which is here printed with\npermission:\n\n\"I, Emma G. Ware, of Portland, Maine, in the United States of America, do\nhereby declare that I knew personally the late Phineas Parkhurst Quimby,\nand that I and my sister, Mrs. Mackay (formerly Sarah E. Ware), were his\npatients while he resided in Portland, between the years 1859 and 1865,\nand that we both owe our restored health to his treatment or mode of\nteaching. I have learned that attempts are being made to deprive him of\nthe credit of being the first to introduce the method of healing through\nthe mind (or, more correctly, of applying moral philosophy to the cure of\ndiseases), and I make this declaration out of regard to him, in order that\nthe credit to which he is entitled may not, without protest, be assumed\nby others. I know that while Mr. Quimby resided in Portland he wrote out\nhis ideas on Mental Science: he was not a scholarly man, and on that\naccount copies of his writings were made by my sister, myself, and by Mr.\nQuimby's son, George A. Quimby. These copies were read over to Mr. Quimby,\nand such corrections made as he thought fit. They are now in the\npossession of Mr. George A. Quimby, who resides in Belfast, Maine, and my\nsister and I have also copies of a number of them. Beyond these, there are\nno other copies of his writings, if I except a few fugitive pieces which\nhe gave away while he resided in Portland. The mode of reasoning pursued\nby Mr. Quimby is not new, but its application to disease as a remedy has\nnot, so far as I am aware, been previously made in modern times. His\nteaching may be thus summarized: that all diseases, whether mental or\nphysical, are caused by an error in reasoning, and that correcting the\nerror will remove the cause, and restore the sufferer to health.\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV.\n\nA GREAT \"METAPHYSICAL\" NOVEL.\n\n\nAs shown by our last chapter, Mrs. Mary Baker Glover Eddy, whatever divine\nattributes may have perched upon her, has been endowed with some very\nhuman qualities. But in one gift she has been strangely lacking--a good\nmemory. For, in spite of her association with Dr. P. P. Quimby, his\nrenovation of her broken system, and all the mellifluous prose and poetry\nshe devoted to him in his day, the fruitful \"mother,\" \"discoverer,\" and\n\"founder\" of \"Christian Science,\" when she came to set up her new\nreligion, entirely forgot that her old friend, Quimby, was the real\nsuggestion of her whole Shekinah. She not only failed to mention the fact,\nbut she has been so miraculously forgetful, ever since, as to repudiate\nher own record of it, and to attempt the obliteration of it from sacred\nand profane history.\n\nMother Eddy's lack of memory, however, has had its plenary compensation.\nHer imagination has more than made up for it. The surcharge of this\nillimitable faculty has enabled her to produce one of the greatest works\nof fiction ever conceived on earth, or possible to any other planet. This\narch-angelic romance, dimly and very distantly founded on fact, bears the\nesoteric title of _Retrospection and Introspection_. It is not in the\nusual form of a novel, but was evaporated by Mrs. Eddy as her corporal and\nspiritual biography, after she had dropped Dr. Quimby from her powers of\nresearch, and had built up her grand theological and financial industry,\n\"Christian Science.\" From an attentive reading of this personally\nconducted and authorized volume, we know the light in which the hallowed\nlady wishes to appear, and we know a good deal more if we read between the\nlines.\n\nAt eight years of age--if we can only credit true piety hitched up with\nlost memory--a heaven-selected little girl, Mary Baker, \"repeatedly heard\na voice,\" calling her \"distinctly by name, three times in an ascending\nscale.\" At first she thought it was a human voice; but in due season--for\nthe call came many times--she, her mother and her cousin, Mehitable\nHuntoon, learned better. Then her mother read to her the Hebrew story of\nlittle Samuel, and advised her to respond to the voice, saying, \"Speak,\nLord, for thy servant heareth.\" Finally the chosen virgin took this\nadvice, whereupon the voice \"came no more\" to her \"_material_ senses.\" Its\nmission had been fulfilled.\n\nSuch is the opening legend told to the marines of the Church Scientist, in\nthat juicy book, _Retrospection and Introspection_.[17]\n\nStill, in these days of \"Spiritual manifestations,\" the numerous believers\nin messages from \"the summer land\" would account, in a quite simple way,\nfor the voices calling little Hebrew Samuel and little New-England Mary.\nBut not so Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy. \"Am I a believer in Spiritualism?\" she\nasks. \"I believe in no ism.... As I understand it Spiritualism is the\nantipode of Christian Science.\"[18]\n\nAh, it was no voice of common, finite spirit, that came to the high and\nmighty founder of an \"absolutely scientific religion.\" So there is but\none conclusion she gives us to draw: _the voice was directly the voice of\nGod_. The Infinite and Omniscient, the All-in-All, spake to the girl of\nnine years, as a miraculous call to her divine work. At that time, she\ntells us, her father thought her \"brain\" was \"too large for her body.\"[19]\nThe old gentleman was doubtless right. It looks, too, as if the brain of\nhis blessed daughter, with the entire head containing it, has been rapidly\nenlarging ever since.\n\nFrom the metaphysical adventures of Saint Mary Baker, as told in her\n_Retrospection and Introspection_,[20] we find that when twelve years old\nshe was admitted to the \"Orthodox Church\" of New England, though she\ndeclined to accept the doctrine of predestination--a doctrine which so\ntroubled her that a doctor was called, who pronounced her \"stricken with\nfever.\" It is told of Martin Luther that when a theological student once\ncame to him half-crazy over the same doctrine, the doughty reformer\nordered him to go and get \"well drunk.\" In the case of Robert Ingersoll,\nhis soul could only find relief from the tenet by such hard swearing that\nit brought him peace. But we are assured by our divine lady of the \"Church\nScientist\" that she took the better as well as the usual course prescribed\nfor such trials. She \"wrestled in prayer.\" For she felt sure that the\nCreator of the Universe, who had once descended in person and spoken to\nher by name, could not fail to possess the faculty of hearing and the\nusefulness of help. Behold it was so! Instantly the fever was gone and\nhealth was restored. \"The physician marveled,\" she says, and John Calvin\n\"lost his power.\"\n\nIn 1878 Rev. Mary Baker G. Eddy was called to preach at the Baptist\nTabernacle of Boston. The congregation increased beyond the capacity of\nthe pews, and it was no uncommon occurrence for the sick to be healed by\nher sermons. Cancers were cured, and \"many pale cripples went into the\nchurch, leaning on crutches, who went out carrying them on their\nshoulders.\" Mrs. Eddy says so.[21]\n\nBy the same authority--in her _Retrospection and Introspection_--it is\nstated that her \"Science of Divine Metaphysical Healing,\" otherwise\n\"Christian Science,\" was \"discovered\" by her in 1866. The day and date are\nnot given. But it was some time after February 15th; for at that time one\nMary M. Patterson was occupied in putting on poetic mourning for Dr. P. P.\nQuimby, and in begging Mr. Julius A. Dresser to visit Lynn and heal an\ninjury to her back from a fall on the ice.\n\nIt is not well to wear mourning too long. In the spring of 1866 it must\nhave occurred to Mrs. Eddy that weeds of poetry would not pay, and she\nhustled them off. Dr. Quimby having gone \"to heaven\" and slipped out of a\ndecayed memory, his obituary poetess just then realized that she had spent\n\"twenty years\" in tracing \"physical effects to a mental cause.\" Then came\nthe \"scientific certainty\" that \"all causation\" is \"Mind,\" and that \"every\neffect is a mental phenomenon.\"[22]\n\nWhat \"Christian Scientists\" mean by \"scientific certainty\" is proof by\n\"healing.\" Take the revered principle of cosmogony that \"the moon is made\nof green cheese.\" If one who holds the doctrine, \"heals\" anybody, the\nproposition is \"demonstrated.\" Mrs. Eddy's \"scientific works\" are all\nfilled with this unanswerable logic. \"Mortal Mind\"--a thing which she\nutterly reprobates--may find difficulty in accepting the conclusion; but\nit is doubtless quite as well founded as most of the \"healing\" itself.\n\nMrs. Eddy's own case is an illustration in point. A bed-ridden invalid for\nyears, she was snatched from death, she has told us, by Dr. Quimby, and\nwithin a week of his first mental treatment she climbed to the top of a\ncity hall. The writer has read a series of Mrs. Eddy's unpublished\nletters, which show that for some time she had varied nervous and spinal\nrelapses. When not with Dr. Quimby, she wrote to him for \"absent\ntreatments,\" and sometimes _saw him appear to her_--or said she did--in\nresponse. Finally she was cured. Then she fell on an icy sidewalk, was\nnearly frightened to death, and wrote her letter beseeching Mr. Dresser to\n\"undertake\" for her. But, having been taught mind-healing by Dr. Quimby,\nshe \"demonstrated\" over herself, and got up. The Doctor's original cure\nappears to have been so effective that her fall on the ice was mostly a\njar of her imagination and a contusion on her veracity. For, in her\n_Retrospection and Introspection_, she solemnly affirms that her accident\ncaused an injury far beyond the reach of \"medicine\" or \"surgery,\" which\nshe repaired by application of the Divine Spirit. This experience, says\nMrs. Eddy (\"scientist\"), was a \"falling apple of discovery\" to her.\nThereupon she went out into the wilderness of Boston--\"withdrew,\" that is,\nfrom society--for three years--that she might search the Scriptures and\nfind \"Science.\"[23] At the end of her retirement, she had learned that\n\"Mind reconstructs the body,\" and that \"nothing else can.\" How it is done,\nshe adds, \"the Spiritual Science of Mind must reveal.\" Her charge for a\ncourse of ten lessons in this \"divine science\" was soon fixed at \"only\nthree hundred dollars.\"[24]\n\nOf the genuine original \"Christian Science\"--the sole and undivided\n\"discovery\" of Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy--she says:\n\n\"I named it _Christian_ because it is compassionate, helpful, and\nspiritual. God I called _Immortal Mind_. That which sins, suffers, and\ndies, I named _mortal mind_. The physical senses, or sensuous nature, I\ncalled _error_ and _shadow_. Soul I denominated _Substance_, because Soul\nalone is truly substantial. God I characterized as individual entity, but\nhis corporeality I denied. The Real I claimed as eternal; and its\nantipodes, or the temporal, I described as unreal. Spirit I called the\n_reality_; and matter, the _unreality_.\"[25]\n\nOn the hash and rehash of theology, here announced, we need not dwell just\nnow, but will consider, for the moment, how much of Mrs. Eddy's\nindividually discovered and copyrighted creed was first expounded, though\n_not_ copyrighted, by one P. P. Quimby.\n\nDr. Quimby never thought of pushing his thought and work under the special\nname of \"Christian Science,\" though his writings show that he used the\nterm.[26]\n\nHe was not in pursuit of money by truckling to current preconception or\nprejudice. We recollect, however--for our own memory has not been laid in\nthe tomb of our piety--that after \"his truth was discovered\" he \"found his\nnew views all portrayed and illustrated in Christ's teachings.\" We\nrecollect that he said of his practise, \"It belongs to a Wisdom that is\nabove man as man. It was taught eighteen hundred years ago, and has never\nhad a place in the heart of man since.\" He said, \"There is a bread which,\nif a man eat, he is filled; and this bread is Christ or Science.\" In 1865\nthe Portland _Advertiser_ said of Dr. Quimby:\n\n\"By a method entirely novel and at first sight quite unintelligible, he\nhas been slowly developing what he calls _the 'Science of Health'_; that\nis, as he defines it, a science founded on principles that can be taught\nand practised like that of mathematics, and not on opinion or experiments\nof any kind whatsoever.\"\n\nPrior to the issue of Mrs. Eddy's _Retrospection and Introspection_ she\nhad, of course, written her other great and better-known work of\nreligious fiction, called _Science and Health_. Now the title of that\nbook--the term \"Science and Health\"--is quite different from Dr. Quimby's\nterm, \"The Science of Health.\" Still, the chief distinction between them,\nconsidering what Dr. Quimby taught, is that the latter came first and the\nformer afterwards.\n\nIt does not appear that God--who in our day has been personally known by\nMrs. Eddy only--and in an interview which _He_ took the trouble to\nseek--was ever technically defined by Dr. Quimby as \"Immortal Mind,\" or\n\"characterized as individual entity,\" with \"corporeality denied.\" It may\nhave been so; for all the obligations derived by Mrs. Eddy from Dr. Quimby\nhave not yet been published. By all competent theologians and\nmetaphysicians, since the beginning at least of human records, God has\nbeen conceived and proclaimed as Infinite Spirit, one with \"Immortal\nMind,\" and above \"corporeality,\" which has been accounted a temporary\nphase of finite things. Plato was pretty nearly made of this conception in\nphilosophy, and St. John in religion. P. P. Quimby was neither a Plato nor\na Saint John; but he \"agreed\" with them, in his literal, honest fashion,\nas he said he did with Bishop Berkeley.\n\nIf Mrs. Eddy had ever read a history of philosophy before she instituted a\nreligion, she would have found that Spinoza honored her advent, some two\nhundred years in advance of it, by postulating \"Substance\" as the \"Soul\"\nof things. Incidentally, too, he postulated \"matter\" as an \"unreality of\nsense,\" and thus, in a way, as \"error\" and \"shadow\"--the product of\n\"mortal mind.\" Dr. Quimby said, with the utmost possible distinctness, \"I\nbelieve matter to be nothing but an idea belonging to the senses\"; and it\nwill be found, when his writings get published, that he said the same\nthing in some hundreds of different ways. But all this was known to the\nthought of India, even before books were written, and the original\nauthorities for it had then been lost.\n\nBut now: in one point of doctrine--and to her the most important\none--Mother Mary Baker G. Eddy does stand completely \"original,\" solitary\nand alone. She holds of \"matter\" that it is not only not what it seems,\nbut is _nothing at all_ save \"unreality.\" To recognize it as anything\nwhatever, beyond \"shadow\" and \"error,\" is to be buried in disease, sin,\nand death. Absolutely to deny the most palpable fact of daily existence is\nto Christian Science the one road to health and salvation.\n\nTo Dr. Quimby, matter was a state of things \"reduced from mind,\" but the\nstate and the things were _here_. They were perfectly _actual_ as _a\ncondition_, though not as an unrelated fixture of all time and eternity.\nEvery \"idealist,\" in every age, has taken this view, excepting only Mrs.\nEddy. Of her own view, no human being out of a refuge for imbeciles or the\nChurch Scientist, could possibly begrudge her the sole copyright. In due\norder Mrs. Eddy's theological speculation will be further considered.\n\nFrom the Arabian Nights tales of _Retrospection and Introspection_, we\nlearn that, before setting up her new church, the revelator \"wandered\nthrough the dim mazes of _Materia Medica_.\" She \"found,\" in Jahr's two\nhundred and sixty-two remedies, the one pervading secret that the less\nmatter and the more mind, the better the work. Homeopathy taught her that\nin the higher attenuations of its drugs, \"matter is rarefied to its fatal\nessence, mortal mind.\" Her conclusion was that \"mortal belief,\" instead of\nany \"drug,\" governs the action of material medicine. \"I claim,\" says she,\n\"for healing scientifically,\" that \"it does away with all material\nmedicine, and recognizes the antidote for all sickness, as well as sin, in\nthe Immortal Mind; and mortal mind as the source of all ills which befall\nmortals.... The mortal body being but the objective state of the mortal\nmind, this mind must be renovated to improve the body.\"[27]\n\nConsidering the high moral perch on which Mrs. Eddy has set herself, and\ncontemplating the cerulean nest in which she has laid the eggs of\n\"science,\" it is really painful here to study her case of fatty\ndegeneration of the memory. For, apart from mere phraseology and\nacquaintance with Jahr, Dr. P. P. Quimby had reached the principle and\npractise of \"healing scientifically,\" more than twenty years before she\nproclaimed it in _Science and Health_, and he had applied it to Mrs. Eddy\nherself, thirteen years prior to that publication, which descended from\nheaven in 1875. He did not mention \"mortal mind\"--by name, that is--for he\ncalled the fact of it \"opinion of the natural man,\" in \"the state of\nmatter,\" and so far of \"error.\" He did not use the term, \"Immortal Mind\";\nfor he designated it as \"Wisdom,\" \"Science,\" and the \"Christ,\" as\ndistinguished from \"the man, Jesus.\" Adopting the Christ _principle_, Dr.\nQuimby aimed to follow, persistently but humbly, in the footsteps of\nJesus. Dr. Quimby, in fact, was covering, both theoretically and\npractically, the whole true and essential field of \"Christian Science,\"\nwhile avoiding its nonsense and its humbugs, at a time when Mrs. Eddy, as\n\"Mary B. Glover,\" was a writer of love stories for \"Peterson's\nMagazine.\"[28]\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V.\n\nA SOFT SET OF CRITICS.\n\n\nWe have now learned a little of Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy's celestial and\nterrestrial biography, as derived from the supramundane novel,\n_Retrospection and Introspection_, and some other sources. Bare allusion\nhas been made to her _Science and Health_. But this, she says, \"is my most\nimportant work, containing the complete statement of Christian Science.\"\n\nThe book, as we have seen, came among men--or, more strictly speaking,\namong less busy women--in 1875; and a thousand copies, we are told,\ncomprised the first edition. \"The critics,\" Mrs. Eddy informs us,\npronounced it \"wholly original,\" but a thing that would \"never be read.\"\n\nThe foolish \"critics\"! How little they knew about \"originality\"! But they\nknew still less of Mrs. Eddy's \"Spiritual _afflatus_,\" as she designates\nit, in the fervency of which \"erudite systems of philosophy\" had \"melted\";\nnor did they realize her \"divinely appointed mission\"; for, in 1891,\n_Science and Health_ had reached sixty-two editions. \"Then the critics\nsaid\" that \"Bishop Berkeley, David Hume, Ralph Waldo Emerson, or certain\nGerman philosophers,\" had originated Mrs. Eddy's sole and well-monopolized\n\"Science.\"[29]\n\nNow if any \"critics\" ever did really shoot such soft intellectual putty as\nthat, they ought certainly to have been condemned to the most heroic sort\nof mind-healing.\n\nThink of George Berkeley, the most acute, the most logical mind of his\nage, standing with both feet on John Locke's \"Essay of the Human\nUnderstanding,\" and attempting to pull himself up into the Infinite by\nmouthing the shibboleth that there is no finite!\n\nAnd David Hume--the bonny skeptic, David--whose keenness brought the\nphilosophy of his age to a logical standstill, and for the moment broke up\nall \"metaphysics\"! Poor David Hume! In the hands of what a \"critic\" it\nwas, who imagined he had ever furnished a speck of meat for such a haggis\nas _Science and Health_!\n\nFor the moment, let us pass by Mr. Emerson, the Puritan mystic of New\nEngland transcendentalism, who beamed serenely down on mere \"critics,\" and\ntold them he hoped he \"had never said anything that needed to be proved.\"\nBut Mrs. Eddy's phrase, \"_certain German philosophers_,\" is one that can\nonly refer to Immanuel Kant, with his school of followers, who summed up\nthe pure thinking of the modern world, as Plato and Aristotle summed up\nthe pure thinking of the ancient world.\n\nHistory tells us that Kant was a man who discovered the planet Uranus by\nmathematics before Herschel found it with a telescope, and who \"had\nmastered all sciences\" to date when he lived. Ripe with the knowledge of\nsixty years, he wrote his _Critique of Pure Reason_. This, the most\nprofound and far-reaching treatise of any age, should have been named \"The\nAnalysis of Mind and Matter, Time and Space\"; for such was really Kant's\nsubject and achievement.\n\nThis extraordinary little German professor, Immanuel Kant, was the most\nregular and temperate of human beings; but he had a touch of asthma, for\nwhich, before all the medicinal properties of mind-cure were known, he\ntook daily about a thimble-full of rum. Kant has been frightfully dealt\nwith by his \"critics,\" the most of whose heads he completely pulverized in\nconnection with their activity in his behalf. But suppose Herr Professor\nKant could have imagined that any \"critic\" on earth would ever accuse him\nof instigating the philosophy of Mary Baker G. Eddy! In that dread event,\n\"the sage of K\u00f6nigsberg,\" who once lost the thread of a lecture when a\nbutton he used to finger was cut from his coat, might have been so\ndisconcerted, so sunk in amazement and despair, as to swallow his whole\nbottle of liquor, instead of the twentieth of a gill, and to burn his\n_Critique of Pure Reason_ in a fit of _delirium tremens_.\n\nIt is well he was tempted into no such catastrophe; for, on getting on a\nbit, we shall find that every possible system of \"metaphysics,\" to have\nany scientific foundation in modern thought, must refer itself to Kant's\ndissection of the universe.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI.\n\n\"THE PRECIOUS VOLUME.\"\n\n\nIn the world of books, Mrs. Eddy's _Science and Health_ is the specially\n\"precious volume\"; for she herself so designates and describes it at the\nhead of a chapter in her _Retrospection and Introspection_.[30] To her,\nindeed, it is a very precious volume--more precious than even a goodly\npile of \"the precious metals.\" Her devotees exchange these for it with\nsublime certainty that they get more than the worth of their money; and\nbeing in great need of science, to say nothing of health, their\nprofuseness may be forgiven.\n\nBut it should be said at once that \"Christian Scientists\" are neither a\nbad nor a specially crude sort of the world's queer inhabitants. They are\nfanatically honest; and, as a whole, they have just that \"little\nknowledge\" which has long been proverbial as \"a dangerous thing.\" Then\nthey are quite incapable of looking through the veil worn by their\nbeatific \"Mother.\"\n\nIn the eyes of the unregenerate, these children of hers frequently turn to\n_Science and Health_, or to a picture of its author celestially touched\nup, when it would be well to inspect their plumbing and wash their\nwindows. But this is no broad case against them; for almost any sort of\ncamp-meeting, without regard to sect, is apt to bring upon the wicked some\nsmall inconveniences.\n\nAs can readily be seen, Mrs. Eddy's lambs are often amusing, and thus\nbrighten life for less spiritual beings.\n\nThere is my babe-eyed friend, Mr. Tott. He never committed a cent's worth\nof sin in his life. He is a veritable piece of the salt of the earth, a\nlittle over-salted. But his youth has departed, and his sight is failing.\nHe used to wear glasses; but he discarded them for \"Christian Science\" and\na dim, economic light. He sees a little yet, though chiefly with \"the eye\nof the mind.\" With this eye, however, he beholds marvels of \"healing\"\ngoing on all around him, which he proclaims and verifies at the weekly\nmeetings of his church. He buys all Mrs. Eddy's books and publications,\nas fast as they come out. By patient effort he deciphers something of\ntheir contents. Then, as he contemplates an assertive text from _Science\nand Health_, or some tale of Jonah interpreted by Mother Eddy's _Key to\nthe Scriptures_, a celestial calm descends on his soul, and folds it in a\nfabric softer than silk. He knows that he is better in health than ever\nbefore, that he sees better, and that the entire universe is becoming\nunspeakably illuminated. Disease never touches his physical frame; he has\nmerely \"a _belief_ of a cold,\" or \"a _belief_ of a corn.\" In the\netherialized Mr. Tott only one thing ever suggests a remnant of \"wicked\nmatter.\" Cast a doubt on the sainthood of Mrs. Eddy, then you behold an\nangel in anger. He may not indulge in personal violence, but he swiftly\nthreatens that, if once you breathe your unholy doubt aloud, \"Judge\nHanna,\" or some other Sampson of \"Science,\" will reduce you to a\ngrease-spot.[31]\n\nBut, among all Mrs. Eddy's followers, her \"precious volume,\" _Science and\nHealth_, is paramountly precious to those who have paid their three\nhundred dollars for imbibing the inmost knowledge of her \"unfathomable\"\nreligion, and have gone forth among the gentiles to teach and to heal. To\na missionary \"in science,\" the \"precious volume\" cannot be too preciously\nbound. Let the daintiest white of the white-winged dove encase its\n\"inspired words,\" printed on translated tissue of ethereal linen. Let the\nsheen of the gold standard furnish splendor for the edges of the leaves,\nand letters for the cover. Let the book be held before the eyes of a new\nstudent or patient, with abysmal solemnity and mystic silence. Hypnotism,\nif you _name_ it such, is bitterly disallowed; but \"the precious volume\"\nis so hallowed a thing that no danger can come from using it in the same\nway as the disk of a mesmerist. Impressiveness is the point--that self may\ndepart, and \"science\" become boundless. Almost every religious sect in all\nhistory has had its fetich. \"Christian Science\" is not behind the\nprocession. Mrs. Eddy's _Science and Health_ is the fetich thereof. In a\nplain garment, for the poorer saints, it may be had for three dollars and\neighteen cents. In the purest, holiest, most golden robe it costs six\ndollars.[32]\n\nLet us look into _Science and Health_ and see what it is; though the\nauthor warns us that something more than \"mortal mind\" is required to\nunderstand it. This she asserts and repeats with the voice, as it were, of\na fog-horn grown eternal, until a multitude of people have come to think\nthat the sound really contains significance. In her _Retrospection and\nIntrospection_ Our Lady of \"The Precious Volume\" says:[33]\n\n\"_Science and Health_ is the textbook of Christian Science.... When the\ndemand for this book increased, and people were healed by simply reading\nit, the copyright was infringed. I entered a suit at law, and my copyright\nwas protected.\"\n\nThe case of \"protected copyright\" to which Mrs. Eddy refers, took place in\n1883. A Mr. Arens had practised some sort of \"mental healing,\" without the\nconsent of the papal mother of \"Christian Science.\" In connection with\nsuch healing he had issued some pamphlets, in which, according to the\ncourt records, he certainly came very near to reproducing certain\nsentences from _Science and Health_, which had a commercial value in his\nline, though they would not have sold for a cent out of \"Science.\" The\nman's defense was that Mrs. Eddy's own works were not original with her,\nbut had been copied from writings by Dr. Quimby.\n\nNow Dr. Quimby, as we have seen, had sown the seed of the whole modern\nfield of \"mental healing,\" and Mrs. Eddy, as Mary M. Patterson, had told\nthe whole truth about it. But Quimby's simple doctrine was that matter is\na phase of mind; and hence that the mind of man, as an inlet of God's\ntruth and power, can change the body and cure disease. Appropriating this\nthought, Mrs. Eddy had stretched it out and blown it up into the ponderous\nmisfit labeled \"Christian Science.\"\n\nIn 1883 none of Dr. Quimby's writings had been published, and there was no\nconvenient evidence to prove that Mrs. Eddy had ascribed his mind-healing\nto \"the Christ that was in him,\" and to his establishment of \"Truth\" in\nwrong-thinking sick patients. As no such facts were presented, and as Mr.\nArens had clearly plagiarized Mrs. Eddy, whatever _she_ had done, the\ncourt properly decided that her \"copyright\" be \"protected.\" In other\nwords, the merits of the case were not involved, though the decision has\ngiven Mother Eddy a chance to say, with her usual candor and logic, that\nthe failure of Arens \"to produce his proof is _conclusive evidence_ that\n_no such proof existed_.\"\n\n_Science and Health_ is a book of nearly seven hundred pages, containing\nsomewhat less than two hundred thousand words; but this brief of\nUn-Christian Non-Science includes Mrs. Eddy's _Key to the Scriptures_.\n\nThe eighty-second edition of \"the precious volume\" is the particular issue\nhere elucidated. We shall make a few quotations from _Science and Health_,\nbut only just enough to verify our criticism of it as a pretentious,\nuntrue, and unhealthy book, which, in the interest of the public, needs to\nbe exploded. For these quotations we shall give Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy\nfull credit. It would be a crime, indeed, to accuse any one else of\noriginating such capsules of metaphysical ipecac.\n\nAs laid down in _Science and Health_, the fundamental propositions of the\nmumbo-jumbo termed \"Christian Science\" are four in number.\n\n_First_: God is All.\n\n_Second_: God is Good. Good is Mind.\n\n_Third_: God, Spirit, being All, nothing is matter.\n\n_Fourth_: Life, God, omnipotent Good, deny death, evil, sin, disease.\nDisease, sin, evil, death, deny Good, omnipotent God, life.\n\nMrs. Eddy says that, _to her_, these are \"_self-evident_ propositions.\"\nThey are proved, too, by \"the rule of inversion.\" They are just as\nharmonious backward as forward. There is a little hitch in Number Four,\nwhich declares one way that God denies death, evil, sin, and disease, and\nthe other way that these deny God. But this one exception to \"the rule of\ninversion\" only confirms it; for, according to Scripture, God is true, and\n\"every [mortal] man a liar.\"\n\nFor the corner-stone, then, of Eddyism, we have self-evident\npropositions--self-evident to the mind of Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy--and\nwith these an appeal to Scripture. Truly enough this must be \"Divine\nScience\"; for no rational creature of modern times can suspect it of being\nhuman science, whether true or false. But, says the great teacher of it,\n\"no human pen or tongue taught me the science,\" and \"neither tongue nor\npen can overthrow it.\" Well, never mind the overthrow. But, when Mrs. Eddy\ntells us that \"no human pen or tongue\" taught her \"the science of\nmind-healing,\" we are obliged to infer that Dr. Quimby was more than\nhuman. How greatly would the plain but gifted Quimby have been shocked,\nhad he foreknown that Mrs. Eddy would thus apotheosize him.\n\nThrough _Science and Health_ we learn that \"Christian Science\" reveals,\n\"incontrovertibly,\" that \"Mind is All-in-all\"--the only \"realities\" being\n\"the divine Mind and idea.\" We learn, further, that this divine Mind is\nGod, that God's idea is Man, and that by authority of Webster an \"idea\" is\n\"an image in mind.\"\n\nIt would be truly pitiable for any theologian, or indeed for any believer\nin a spirit-principle of the cosmos, to attempt the \"overthrow\" of these\nvenerable \"revelations\" now protected by Mrs. Eddy's copyright, but which\nwere hoary with age even in the days of the Greek Academy. Barring\nWebster's definition of an idea, these \"revelations\" to Mrs. Eddy appear\nrevealed in the Bible, though not copyrighted. As logical metaphysics, in\nrecent times, Hegel reduced them to their utmost sublimation; and Hegel is\nexcellent authority in many of our colleges, as well as with the good Dr.\nHarris, our United States Commissioner of Education at Washington.\n\nLet us say once more that there is no trouble in effecting a spiritual\nderivation of the universe, except to our friends, \"the materialists,\" who\nhave themselves refined \"matter\" to things not much like it. The only\ntrouble with an all-containing, all-pervading Spiritual Source of\nExistence, is in the funny havoc sometimes made of it by half-baked\npeople, like \"Christian Scientists.\"\n\nTo Dr. Quimby, \"Mind,\" or \"Spirit\" was the principle of all things. To\nhim, Matter was a condition of Spirit--\"an idea,\" he said, \"reduced to a\nsolid\"--a \"solid\" meaning a definite and real appearance to human sense.\nBut this conception, which the old and regular school of metaphysicians\nhave held for thousands of years, would not do for the genuine original\n\"Mother of Christian Science\" when she came to prescribe a dogma for the\ncure of all possible disease from leprosy to bunions. It was necessary,\nshe thought, to have a stronger pill. She compounded it in the form that\n\"matter,\" including the \"mortal body,\" is not only \"the objective state of\nthe mortal mind,\" but that mortal mind is unmixed, \"error,\" entailing all\nsin, disease, and death. Yet \"error\" is really \"nothing\"; or say something\nonly to be _denied_. The duty of life, \"_in Science_,\" is to make this\ndenial effective. Matter, sin, disease, are absolute illusions and\ndelusions of \"mortal mind,\" which itself is just \"error,\" to be wiped out.\nNow say so, and they are all gone. Or if they persist in seeming to be\nanywhere, be more firm with them. Sing the denial, as well as say it. Keep\nit up. Let nothing else intervene for a second. Let every paragraph you\nwrite be made of it. Give it ten thousand different forms, and each form\nten thousand variations. If you fully concentrate your whole mind on this\n\"divine\" business, and pay the full price for learning it, you will\nelevate yourself into \"perfect harmony\" with \"Immortal Mind.\" When you\naccomplish this undertaking, impurity and evil, sin, disease and death,\nwill disappear as the shadow of their original nothingness, which they\nalways are and ever were.\n\nHere is the whole real substance of \"the precious volume,\" _Science and\nHealth_, including Mrs. Eddy's marvelous _Key to the Scriptures_. Still,\nthe holy tome has some interesting particulars.\n\nOn opening it, and journeying only as far as page 2, one finds that, while\n\"Christian Science\" is copyrighted property, \"the Divine Spirit\" was the\nreal author of it; for Mrs. Eddy explicitly declares that through\n\"Christian Science\" the Divine Spirit testified to her, and that the\ntestimony unfolded her one basic, forever-echoed assumption that \"matter\"\nhas nothing in it but \"falsity.\"\n\nNext comes up the Platonic conception--which, unfortunately for Plato, he\nneglected to copyright--that the Principle of Mind, with its reflection\nor \"idea,\" constitutes the real universe. Mrs. Eddy pronounces this\nphilosophical conception a scientific fact; but it was not \"proved to the\nsenses\"--which, by the way, _never perceive anything but \"error\"_--until\n\"Christian Science revealed it.\" Then it was proved \"incontrovertibly,\nabsolutely and divinely,\" by repairing Mrs. Eddy's back after a fall on\nice.\n\nFrom time immemorial, the history of philosophy has been familiar with the\nthought that the human body is a reflex and product of mind; a practical\nreality for all earthly conditions and purposes, but resolvable, from the\nview of spirit, into simply an objective appearance. The thought, too, has\nbeen frequent in poetry. Three hundred years ago Spenser sang:\n\n  \"So every spirit, as it is more pure,\n    And hath in it the more of heavenly light,\n  So it the fairer body doth procure\n    To habit in, and it more fairly dight\n    With cheerful grace and amiable sight.\n  _For, of the soul, the body form doth take,\n  For soul is form, and doth the body make._\n\nYet Mrs. Eddy claims this doctrine, too, as her \"discovery,\" though, with\nher, it is not merely \"mind,\" but the \"mortal\" or \"misnamed\" article,\nthat produces the body. All such \"mind\" is unalloyed \"error,\" and the\nbody, or apparition of this error, is another error. It was this\n\"discovery,\" she says, that led to her infallible proposition, the\nall-inclusiveness of Immortal Mind and the all-nothingness of matter,\nwhich she made the bed-rock of her all-healing \"Science.\"\n\nMatter being Nothing, and our bodies being nothing but error, there is\ngreat use, notwithstanding, for the one genuine medicine, \"Christian\nScience.\" \"Physical healing,\" with \"mental healing\" thrown in, is the\nlarge wholesale business of which Mother Eddy is proprietor and director.\nIn the last analysis, according to the preface of _Science and Health_,\nthis medicine is \"Divine Principle.\" Such a remedy naturally dispels the\nunfounded belief of matter, the unfounded imaginings of sickness and sin,\nwhich drop out of supposed reality, and so out of existence.\n\nAs the term \"Christian Science\" is necessarily suggestive of Christian\nhistory, even Mrs. Eddy has not quite claimed the whole product of\nChristianity as originating in _Science and Health_. She does admit, with\npious candor, that God imparted the _spirit_ of Christian Science to Jesus\nand the Apostles. But the _letter_ is another thing. \"The absolute letter\"\nwaited for Mary Baker G. Eddy; and, were the blessed lady a living\nkaleidoscope, she could hardly add to the combinations and varieties in\nwhich she presents this claim to her readers.\n\nEddyism proclaims One God, all-inclusive, whose highest title is \"Immortal\nMind.\" But, \"in Science,\" this God, being all-inclusive, as Unity,\nIdentity, and Goodness--so otherwise all-_ex_clusive--there is no room\nanywhere for a Devil, or say, rather, the _recognition_ of one. If God is\nnot only all, but all-good, no opposite to this principle can exist.\nHowever, there is \"mortal mind,\" or \"sense,\" with its image and creation,\n\"matter,\" and in these are sin and disease. Still, mortal mind, matter,\nsin, disease, have no relation or reference to God. _He_ \"fills all\nSpace.\"[34] _They_ subsist neither by His creation nor permission. Hence\nthey _can not be_--they are just _naught_.\n\nBut hold! Christian Science, with _Science and Health_, being present\navatars to dispel sin and cure disease, such a science and such a book\nnecessarily admit sickness and sin, both implicitly and explicitly. Now\nwhat is to be done in such a dilemma? Why, mortal mind, matter, evil, and\nall afflictions, while \"nothing,\" are a kind of nothing that may be\nmentioned as \"error\" and ultimate \"self-nullity.\" Thus, while Eddy\nScience, alias \"Christian Science,\" has no real Devil, it has a very\npractical _seeming_ Devil, and whips him from stump to stump with logic\nworse than himself. Finally, as he is not \"substance,\" but \"shadow,\" you\nknock him out by calling him names.\n\nBut the doctrine of the Trinity, as \"demonstrated in Science,\" is the best\nabstract of the Eddy theology. This Trinity consists of one self-identical\n\"Father-and-Mother God\"; Man, \"the Idea\" or \"Reflection\"; then Christian\nScience, \"the Holy Comforter.\"\n\nThe position of man, as theologized by Mrs. Eddy, is, if anything, more\nterribly mixed than that of the Devil. Man is \"the image of God\"; but, as\nGod is _All_, man has \"no real individuality.\" He cannot have personality\nof his own, as God has no \"separability.\" Still this \"God's idea,\" named\nman, somehow takes on an imaginary state, named \"mortal mind,\" and this\nimaginary state has a dream of error and misery named \"Sense.\" Human\nindividuality, mortal mind, and sense, are all, in reality, null and void.\nMan, however, being God's idea and reflection, can never lose his\nunpossessed \"true self.\" The divine contradictions of _Science and Health_\nare here insurmountable. Let no man try to rationalize them. Mrs. Eddy\nwell remarks in her _Retrospection and Introspection_, that \"Divine\nScience demands mighty wrestlings with mortal beliefs, as we sail into the\neternal haven over the unfathomable sea of possibilities.\"\n\n  O Lord, how long!\n  Oh, bosh, how strong!\n\nThe fact is that any long-continued reading of _Science and Health_, with\nthe innocence to imagine it either true, difficult or profound, is enough\nto turn a weak mind idiotic. To a trained thinker, the only danger from\nthe book is an attack of nausea or a hemorrhage from laughing.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII.\n\n\"KEY\" TO THE EDDY SCRIPTURE, SCIENCE AND HEALTH.\n\n\nMrs. Eddy's Un-Christian Non-Science may be summarized as a caricature of\nher early \"New England Orthodoxy,\" crazily combined with New England\nTranscendentalism, coated with a kind of free-thought permissible only to\nher own \"divine Science,\" all overlying Dr. Quimby's \"Science of Health,\"\nand carefully put under copyright.\n\nLet us now see a few moonstone gems from her \"precious volume\"--just\nenough to illustrate our criticism of it and not infringe on her\nmonopolized territory.\n\nIt may be explained, by the way, that the United States statute governing\ncopyright precludes the reproduction and sale of books and pamphlets, _as\nwholes_, without permission of the authors; and protects even _parts_ of\ndramas, pictures, and other \"works of art\"--the intent being, of course,\nto protect, also, one of the Ten Commandments: \"Thou shalt not steal.\"\nBut, if an untrue and injurious book could not be analyzed, and a dozen\nextracts taken from it in proof of criticism, no literary quack could be\nexposed, in protection of the truth and the public. In that case, the\nCopyright Law would be worse than the old \"Fugitive Slave Bill,\" and it\nwould be a sacred duty to get into jail, if necessary, for violating it.\nFortunately there is no such need. The law was not drawn in the interest\nof charlatans and malefactors, and has never been interpreted against the\ndecencies of justice.\n\nFollowing \"Mother\" Eddy's example in connection with our quotations from\nher _Science and Health_, we shall interpret them in a strictly\n\"scientific\" light, as she, with miraculous nerve, in her _Key to the\nScriptures_, has done with other sacred writings. Thus we shall illumine\n_Science and Health_ in the same way that she has illumined _Genesis_ and\n_The Apocalypse_.\n\n_Science and Health_, 7.[35]--\"In the year 1866 I discovered the Science\nof Metaphysical Healing, and named it Christian Science. God had been\ngraciously fitting me, during many years, for the reception of a final\nrevelation of the absolute Principle of Scientific Mind-healing.\"\n\n_Interpretation \"in Science.\"_--History reveals to us, for sure, that\n\"Mother Eddy,\" has always _claimed_ to have discovered and founded the\nonly genuine and original Christian Science. Though she was once a patient\nof Dr. P. P. Quimby, and at that time one Mary M. Patterson said that\nQuimby cured disease by mental truth--\"the truth that Christ taught\"--this\nmiserable episode has nothing to do with the case. Mrs. Eddy has told us\nthat the Patterson woman was a creature \"ignorant\" of \"Science,\" whom Dr.\nQuimby used to \"mesmerize.\" He cured her of a seven-years' complaint in\nthe mortal body, but so addled her head that she had no knowledge of what\nshe talked about. Thus, Mrs. Patterson's impression that Dr. Quimby was\nthe modern founder of mind-healing has no weight. The truth was not in\nher. But Mother Eddy, notwithstanding she herself was once that same Mrs.\nPatterson, discovered all truth and all science, without regard to any of\nher previous statements.\n\n_Science and Health_, 453.--\"A Christian Scientist needs my work on\nScience and Health for his textbook, and so do all his students and\npatients.... It is the voice of Truth to this age, and contains the whole\nof Christian Science, or the Science of healing through Mind.... It was\nthe first published book containing a statement of Christian Science....\nIt registered this revealed Truth, uncontaminated with human hypotheses.\nOther works, which have borrowed from this book without giving it credit,\nhave adulterated the Science.\"\n\n_Interpretation \"in Science.\"_--It is evident that everybody \"in Science\"\nshould buy its real Bible, _Science and Health_; for the Old and the New\nTestament, while it is policy to use them in the Church Scientist, are in\ndreadful need of exegesis by Mary Baker G. Eddy. She is the one religious\nperson, altogether scientific, that now exists in the world. She is\n\"uncontaminated truth,\" and anything that interferes with her abets\nlarceny and spreads leprosy. Moreover, it is a financial crime against\nher, conducive to heart-disease. Let it again be stated that \"the precious\nvolume,\" _Science and Health_, is cheap for cash, ranging from only $3.18\nto $6.\n\n_Science and Health_, _Pref._ VIII.--\"The question, What is Truth? is\nanswered by demonstration--by healing disease and sin.\"\n\n_Interpretation \"in Science.\"_--That truth can only be set on its absolute\nend by curing megrims and other unhealthiness, has been incontrovertibly\nsettled by the religious experience of \"Mother Eddy\" herself. When she\nrose into the revelation that matter is nothing--not even a phenomenal\ncondition of anything--the truth instantly spliced her broken spine. It\nwas this \"demonstration by healing\" that transformed the ignorant,\ndeluded, mesmerized Mary M. Patterson, into our holy, scientific,\ninfallible Lady of the \"Precious Volume.\"\n\n_Science and Health_, 2 _and_ 3, _passim._--\"The divine Spirit, testifying\nthrough Christian Science, unfolded to me the demonstrable fact that\nmatter possesses neither sensation nor life.... Human experiences show the\nfalsity of all material things.... My discovery that erring, mortal,\nmisnamed _mind_, produces all the organism and action of the mortal body,\nled up to my demonstration that Mind is All, and matter is naught, as the\nleading factor in Mind-Science.... The revelation of Truth in the\nunderstanding came to me gradually, and apparently through divine power.\nWhen a new spiritual idea is borne to earth, the prophetic Scripture of\nIsaiah is renewedly fulfilled: 'Unto us a child is born ... and his name\nshall be Wonderful.'\"\n\n_Interpretation \"in Science.\"_--That there is absolutely nothing in\nanything you see, feel, hear, taste or smell, is eternally laid down as\n\"the leading factor in Mind-Science.\" Though the ideas of Mrs. Mary Baker\nG. Eddy are all wonderful, this is the most surpassingly wonderful of all.\nBut Mother Eddy herself is much more wonderful than even her ideas. As\nlittle Mary Baker she was wonderful in her likeness to little Samuel; as\nMary M. Patterson, she was more wonderful as a mesmerized victim of Dr.\nQuimby; and, as Mary Baker G. Eddy, she is most wonderful, as the Ark of\nthe Covenant of the only true Medicinal Religion. All Mother Eddy's\nwritings point, all the time, to this beautiful lesson.\n\n_Science and Health_, 5.--\"No analogy exists between the vague hypotheses\nof Agnosticism, or Millenarianism, and the demonstrable truths of\nChristian Science; and I find the will, or sensuous reason of the human\nmind, to be opposed to the divine Mind, expressed through Divine Science.\"\n\n_Interpretation \"in Science.\"_--All the ancient and modern \"isms,\" except\nEddyism, we must sit on and blot out. The most of them are unpopular, and\ndon't bring us in anything. But he who opposes Eddyism contradicts the\nDivine Mind, expressed through Divine Science, which, logically, must be\nthe production of our Divine Mother.\n\n_Science and Health_, 8.--\"The phrase _mortal mind_ implies something\nuntrue, and, therefore, unreal.\"\n\n_Interpretation \"in Science.\"_--This truth is to be taken as infallible on\nall occasions. Still, the unreality, mortal mind, is a thing to be healed\nby Christian Science, and there is money in the metaphysical pills.\n\n_Science and Health_, 21.--\"There is no physical science, inasmuch, as\nall true Science proceeds from divine Intelligence.\"\n\n_Interpretation \"in Science.\"_--Shut up your arithmetic, geometry,\nphysics, and astronomy. They amount to nothing. There is no truly\nscientific book except _Science and Health_.\n\n_Science and Health_, 25.--\"Must Christian Science come through the\nChristian churches, as some insist? This Science has come already, and\ncome through the one whom God called.\"\n\n_Interpretation \"in Science.\"_--Christian Science, my beloved, is\ncopyrighted property, and can only spread through the owner and her\ndeputies. The \"one whom God called\" is Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy.\n\n_Science and Health_, 244, 245, 473, 284.--\"The act of describing disease\nmakes the disease. Warning people against disease frightens them into it.\nThis obnoxious habit ought to cease.... The unscientific practitioner\nsays: 'You are ill; you must rest.' Science objects to all this.... Mind\ncontrols the body and brain.... A cup of tea is not the equal of Truth....\nA material body is a mortal belief.... The medicine of Science is divine\nMind.\"\n\n_Interpretation \"in Science.\"_--Your doctor is a fool, whether he be\nallopathic, homeopathic, magnetic, or even of any _unauthorized_ school of\nmind-healing. Dismiss him, and send for a Christian Science M. D.,\nauthorized to practise by Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy. If he can't cure you,\nit will not be his fault; it will be simply because your mind, or the\nminds around you, or both, are out of tune with _Science and Health_ and\n_its Key to the Scriptures_.\n\n_Science and Health_, 259, 480, 475.--\"Electricity, the offspring of\nfinite mind, is unreal.... The physical universe expresses the conscious\nand unconscious thoughts of mortals. Physical force and mortal mind are\none.... Matter is neither self-existent nor a product of Spirit. An image\nof mortal thought, reflected on the retina, is all the eye beholds.\"\n\n_Interpretation \"in Science.\"_--That a force like electricity has no\nreference to any principle or power but finite mind, will always be hard\nfor an unscientized person to believe. But Mother Eddy knows, and her word\nmust go. Still, the unreality of electricity is not quite so to people\n\"out of science.\" If one toys with a trolley-wire before he has read and\nunderstood _Science and Health_, he may experience a slight shock of\nreality, if he lives long enough. But one who has purchased Mrs. Eddy's\ngreat work, and who reads it constantly, need have no fear of\nelectrocution, or anything else. His mortal mind has pretty nearly\ndeparted from him. His \"physical universe\" is hardly a picture of\n\"conscious thoughts,\" and his \"unconscious thoughts,\" whatever such things\nmay be, will never lead him into much danger.\n\n_Science and Health_, 487.--\"Science reveals material man as a dream at\nall times, and never as the real Being.\"\n\n_Interpretation \"in Science.\"_--Mortals are nothing. The One and Only\nBeing is the Father-and-Mother God of Christian Science. Our Mother is\nMrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy.\n\n_Science and Health_, 411.--\"The Scientist knows there can be no\nhereditary disease, since matter cannot transmit good or evil intelligence\nto man, and Mind produces no pain in matter.\"\n\n_Interpretation \"in Science.\"_--On the ground that mind and matter are\nabsolutely unconnected, there can be no doubt of there being no hereditary\ndisease. On the same ground there can be no heredity itself, and no world\nfor heredity to exist in. How true it is, \"in Science,\" that all actuality\nhas no actuality in it!\n\n_Science and Health_, 28.--\"The true Logos is demonstrably Christian\nScience.\"\n\n_Interpretation \"in Science.\"_--We know, too, from Mrs. Eddy's \"precious\nvolume,\" that Christian Science, in addition to being the Logos, is the\nHoly Comforter. Thus her copyrighted religion is two-thirds of the\nTrinity.\n\n_Science and Health_, 411.--\"The daily ablutions of an infant are no more\nnatural or necessary than would be the process of taking a fish out of\nwater every day, and covering it with dirt, in order to make it thrive\nmore vigorously thereafter in its native element.... Water is not the\nnatural habitat of humanity.\"\n\n_Interpretation \"in Science.\"_--Don't take the trouble to wash the baby.\nHis body is only an expression of mortal mind, and is thus so mussed up\nwith error and nothingness that water will never get him clean. His proper\nhabitat is \"Science.\" Scrub his \"conscious and unconscious thoughts\" with\nChristian Science, and never mind the rest of him.\n\nWe shall make but one more quotation, here, from Mrs. Eddy's \"Divine\ncomedy,\" _Science and Health_. There is no use of being too serious with\nit. History will soon take it as mostly a \"grim joke\" on metaphysics,\ntheology, and medicine. But one thing must give us pause. On approaching\nthe Lord's Prayer, one feels himself on solemn ground, if such ground\nthere be anywhere in life, and for once, if never before, puts on the\nmantle of conservatism. But, to Mrs. Eddy, the words of Jesus in devotion\nand supplication--at once the simplest and grandest words ever\nuttered--require her \"spiritual interpretation.\" What, in her index to\n_Science and Health_, she terms the \"Spiritualized version\" of the Lord's\nPrayer is this:\n\n\"Our Father and Mother God, all-harmonized, Adorable One. Ever present and\nOmnipotent. Thy Supremacy appears as matter disappears. Give us grace for\nto-day; Thou fillest the famished affections; and Love is reflected in\nlove. And leavest us not in temptation, but freest us from sin, disease\nand death; for Thou art all Substance, Life, Truth, and Love,\nforever.--_So be it._\"\n\nThe author of the _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_ tells of a poet who\n\n  \"Breaks into blank the Gospel of St. Luke,\n  And boldly pilfers from the Pentateuch;\n  And, undisturbed by conscientious qualms,\n  Perverts the Prophets, and purloins the psalms.\"\n\nLet any one not \"in Science\" ask himself if Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy has not\ngone farther and done worse.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII.\n\n\"CHRISTIAN-SCIENCE\" ORGANIZING FORCES.\n\n\nAs Mrs. Eddy has been a manufacturer and vender of \"Christian Science\" for\na comparatively short time--only a quarter of a century--many good people\nwho knew her at the inception of that successful industry are still on\nearth, in an active condition of \"mortal mind.\" They have volunteered to\nfurnish for this brief book a variety of plain and ornamental information\nthat is not essential to it. But, in justice to history and biography, one\npoint must not be omitted. They all agree that \"Mother Eddy,\" like C\u00e6sar,\nthe Standard Oil Company, and the Sugar Trust, has more organizing\ncapacity than \"the sons and daughters of God,\" to use her own phrase,\ngenerally possess. With this capacity, it is also agreed that never a\nBonaparte, never a Jay Gould, never a Pierpont Morgan, could be more\nhandy in surmounting all over-nice impediments to practical success.\n\nThus by her rare combination of terrestrial and celestial genius, \"Mother\nEddy\" has been able to hold her copyrighted religion, \"Christian Science,\"\nstrictly under her personal regnancy, and direct it to the highest\nfinancial, doctrinal, and healing ends. She permits no tinge of private\njudgment, no stain of unauthorized opinion, and no mere finite criticism,\nso far as she can silence it. She is the Church, and membership is\nobedience. Hence she bitterly antagonizes all independent agencies of\nscientific salvation, though with eyes rolled up, and with fervent\nproclamations of unbounded \"love.\" In her _Science and Health_, she\nadvises her readers not to read other \"scientific works,\" as they are full\nof \"materialism,\" and are not \"Scientifically Christian.\" Directly or\nindirectly, too, there is always the point that money can be much better\ninvested in Mrs. Eddy's own \"sacred\" and \"positively demonstrated\"\nwritings. It would almost seem that, in her universal motherhood, Mrs.\nMary Baker G. Eddy must have borne Mohammed's great soldier who burned\nthe Alexandrian library in devotion to the _Koran_.\n\nTo a great organizer, a wholesale business is always more attractive than\nretail trade. It is handled quite as easily, with less detail, and\nthousands of small merchants contribute to the proceeds. The able founder\nof \"Christian Science\" early realized this fact--in her case drawn from on\nhigh, but sometimes reached through commercial experience. Having retired\ninto the wilderness of her mind, far from all monitions of \"sense\"; having\ntrained her memory to forget the existence of \"matter,\" \"error,\" and Mary\nM. Patterson; having taken a three-years' vacation with her only peers,\n\"the ancient worthies\" and \"the Scriptures\"; Mrs. Eddy came back at last,\namong the human species, with the metaphysics and curative formulas of\n\"Christian Science.\" Then came practical transactions in \"revelations\" and\n\"mental medicine,\" which soon rivaled the sales of Mrs. Winslow's Soothing\nSyrup and Lydia Pinkham's celebrated compound.\n\nThough Mrs. Eddy has gradually taken into her service various literary\nexperts, theologico-commercial travelers and metaphysical auctioneers,\nshe has always supervised, in person, the wholesale department of\n\"Christian Science.\" On her return from the skies, she brought down a\nlarge collection of documents in which \"the whole science\" was condensed\nand canned, and all the medical prescriptions required to fulfil a\nmillennium of holiness and health. With these documents in hand she formed\nclasses of \"loyal students,\" her definition of \"loyalty\" being \"allegiance\nto God\" (as manifested in Mary Baker); \"subordination of the human\" (the\nstudent) \"to the divine\" (the teacher); \"steadfast justice\" (no wobbling\nover the cash); and strict adherence to \"divine Truth and Love\" (the\nMother of the Logos and the Holy Comforter forever glorified).\n\nTo be more specific, it was in the year 1867 that Mrs. Mary Baker Glover\nPatterson, freed by divorce from the last-named culprit, and married to\nAsa Gilbert Eddy, began, as she records it, the teaching of \"Christian\nScience Mind Healing\" to \"one student.\" Here was a good seed sown in\nfructifying ground; for, in 1881, it had grown to be \"The Massachusetts\nMetaphysical College\" of Boston.[36]\n\nThis vast institution was managed by Mrs. Eddy as chief impartress of\n\"science,\" her assistants being her husband, her adopted son, and a\nGeneral Bates. These four \"scientists\" constituted the faculty.\n\nMrs. Eddy's last husband is described, by those who knew him, as one of\nthe most humble and obedient men that ever blest a perfect woman in\nimmaculate matrimony. His value as a college professor may be inferred\nfrom one reminiscence of him. His supreme better-half once sued a poor\nyoung doctor who had fallen away from \"science,\" and taken to homeopathy,\nthat she might collect her fee for having taught him \"Christian Science\ntherapeutics.\" Her husband, Asa, was a witness for her, to prove the\npecuniary value of her instruction, and was asked, among other questions,\n\n\"What is Man?\" \"As near as I can make it out,\" replied Prof. Eddy, \"Man is\nan image.\" Mrs. Eddy lost her case, as the court was too unspiritual to\nreduce her \"metaphysics\" to dollars and cents.[37] But the good Asa\nshowed that he was an \"image\" of Mary; and, in her _Retrospection and\nIntrospection_, she has gratefully embalmed his memory in a text from the\nPsalms.\n\n\"Mark the perfect _man_, and behold the upright: for the end of _that_ man\n_is_ peace.\"\n\nThe italics are not in the psalm, but are Mary's.\n\nSome further conception of \"the perfect man,\" Prof. Eddy, and the value of\nMother Eddy's estimate of him, may be gathered from an item which appeared\nin the Boston _Evening Herald_ of December 7, 1878, stating that \"Edward\nJ. Arens and Asa G. Eddy were indicted to-day by the Grand Jury for\nsoliciting James H. Sargent to kill Daniel H. Spofford.\" It appears that\nSpofford, in order to probe the matter, led on the conspiracy, and so\nbecame technically involved in it himself. Thus the affair became so mixed\nup that, according to the official court-record, the District Attorney\nconcluded not to prosecute the indictment, and Arens and Eddy were\n\"discharged _on payment of costs_.\" The divine \"Mother Eddy\" surely could\nnot have instigated a conspiracy to murder Spofford (a troublesome\nbackslider from \"Science\"), though he and many other backsliders, who know\nher well, have long labored under the impression that the whole enterprise\nwas hers.\n\nThe human head is a queer bulb, and often seems to be a direct evolution\nfrom the squash. This hypothesis, illustrated by the researches of Darwin\nand his school, accounts for the rapid growth of Mrs. Eddy's Massachusetts\nMetaphysical College from 1881 to 1889, when, in the latter year, she\nclosed it. At that time, as she recollects things, her college was not\nonly filled, but \"flooded\" with students from all parts of America,\nEurope, and the world. Three hundred applications were on the list, and\nthe number was rapidly increasing.[38]\n\nIf Mrs. Eddy were not so far above the world and the flesh that her\nreasons for things seldom comport with a sub-lunar search into them, it\nmight be possible to believe that she discontinued her college because she\nfeared that \"material organization,\" applied to \"Christian Science,\"\nwould obstruct \"Love's Spiritual compact.\" Whatever it means, this at\nleast is what she _says_. The success of her college had shown her the\ndanger of placing people on \"earthly pinnacles\"; and even \"mortal mind\"\ncan see that such a setting-up might lead students away from the primal\nMother and the central contribution-box. Besides, she had always had\n\"conscientious scruples\" against \"giving diplomas\" when she thought of\nthose same \"earthly pinnacles.\"\n\nIt may throw some light on the sudden closing of \"The Massachusetts\nMetaphysical College\" to note that, notwithstanding \"Mother\" Eddy's\n\"conscientious scruples\" against granting mere \"diplomas,\" she had issued\nhundreds of metaphysico-medical degrees at high prices.\n\nAccording to a statement of hers, she obtained her college charter from\nthe State of Massachusetts in 1881, \"with the right to grant degrees.\" But\nthe act on which this grant was based was repealed in 1882. Then, in 1883,\nthe conferring of \"any diploma or degree\" by any \"corporation\" or\n\"association,\" was made a legal offense, punishable by a fine of not less\nthan $500. Being the \"president,\" not of any \"corporation\" or\n\"association,\" but of a regular \"college\" (with a faculty of three beside\nherself), Mother Eddy's legal mind has held that this law, if aimed at\nher, failed to hit, though it knocked out all other mind-healing\ncolleges.[39] But, in 1889, when, as persistent rumor has it, the problem\nwas about to be solved by legal process against \"Mother Eddy,\" the subject\nwas practically closed by the closing of her \"college,\" and by her\nretirement to New Hampshire, where \"the wicked cease from troubling and\nthe weary are at rest.\"\n\nConsidering Mrs. Eddy's kind of \"college-faculty\" and \"board,\" together\nwith her exhaustive copyrights and the hierarchical monopolies consequent\nupon them, it is quite conceivable that when time was ripe she had no\ndifficulty in \"unanimously\" passing resolutions to discontinue her\n\"flourishing school.\" The little joker in this pack of resolutions soon\ncame out in one of them. It deftly touched the matter of \"organization,\"\nand then propounded that \"the hour\" had \"come\" when \"the great need\" was\nfor \"more of the Spirit,\" not \"the letter,\" and that _Science and Health_\nwas the spirit's nutriment.\n\nIt is not directly stated by Mother Eddy in this connection, that God\nHimself fixed the scale of prices for her book; but she does say it was\n\"God\" who \"impelled\" her to \"set a price\" for her \"instruction in\nChristian-Science Mind-Healing.\" The price was three-hundred dollars a\nhead, for a college course of three weeks. At first she \"shrank from\nasking it.\" But \"a strange providence\" led Mary to these terms, and \"God,\"\nshe asserts, \"has since shown\" her, in \"multitudinous ways,\" the \"wisdom\"\nof her \"decision.\"[40] The \"strange providence\" and \"the multitudinous\nways\" are not explained by her; but the \"wisdom\" of gathering together fat\nbank-deposits is unanimously acknowledged in the Church Scientist.\n\nWhen our republic was a hundred years old, it had become worthy of having\n\"The First Christian Science Association.\" That body was accordingly\norganized, on the fourth day of July, 1876, by Mrs. Eddy and six of her\nhead-light reflectors. Three years later, the Association balloted on\nforming a Church, and the Eddyites won by a large plurality. Rev. Mary\nBaker G. Eddy was of course chosen its \"first pastor,\" and during her\nministration it prospered in numbers and popularity. That is, she says so\nin her _Retrospection and Introspection_. But owing to tons of work, which\nincreased upon her, she was unable to give the Church sufficient\nattention, and no son or daughter of \"Science\" was competent to take her\nplace. Her church was \"envied\" and \"molested\" by other churches, and there\nwas danger of \"Christian warfare\"--which might have led to a diminution of\nproselytes, and more horrible still, a loss of shekels. In such an\nextremity, she \"recommended\" the dissolution of the First Church\nScientist, and again, as ever, her recommendation went through \"without a\ndissenting voice.\"\n\n\"This measure,\" she tells us, was followed by \"a great revival\" in the way\nof \"mutual love,\" with \"spiritual power\" and \"prosperity.\" Those, we may\nbe sure, were money-making times. Mrs. Eddy's reasons for dissolving her\nchurch were doubtless infallible. Still, that same church at once\nresurrected itself and exalted its horn--the \"Mother Church\" in Boston,\nand then children and grandchildren galore, in hundreds of secondary\n\"Hubs\" and their suburbs.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX.\n\nTHE ONE TRUE \"MOTHER CHURCH.\"[41]\n\n\nIt was in 1889, says Mrs. Eddy, that \"I gave a lot of land in Boston,\" on\nwhich to erect \"a church edifice\" as \"a temple for Christian Science\nworship.\"[42] The land, she is particular to say, was worth \"twenty\nthousand dollars,\" and was \"rising in value.\" As she has been careful to\nmention this increment of the \"rise\"--not hiding it under a bushel, but\nsetting it on top of the cover--we must be sure to add it to the sum of\nthe original benevolence.\n\nBut how much labor could be saved by a meek historian if only Mrs. Eddy's\nword could ever be safely accepted without looking behind it! On\nconsulting the official registry of such matters, one finds that before\nMrs. Eddy gave her land to the Church of Christ Scientist, _the Church\nitself owned the land_, under a mortgage of nine thousand dollars, four\nthousand of which had been paid off. The balance was five thousand. The\nprovident \"Mother\" bought this mortgage and foreclosed it. She then\nconveyed the property to the trustees of the First Church of Christ\nScientist, reserving the right to re-enter and repossess the land, with\nimprovements, in case a church erected on it should not be run to suit\nher. All this was specified in ten conditions, which the angels have not\nrecorded in her biography.\n\nAdjoining the Eddy castle of \"metaphysics\" are two lots on which stand two\nbuildings of the Christian Science Publishing Society. This real estate\nwas set down in February, 1898, by the editor of \"The Christian Science\nJournal,\" to be worth not less than twenty-two thousand dollars. On\nJanuary 25th, 1898, \"Mother\" Eddy generously conveyed it to the First\nChurch of Christ Scientist. _But_, three days before--on the 21st of\nJanuary, 1898--the Christian Science Publishing Society, for the sum of\none dollar, had _conveyed it to her_. The string tied to her\n_re_-conveyance was that she should \"have and occupy so much room\nconveniently and pleasantly located\" in the establishment, as might \"be\nnecessary to carry on the publication and sale\" of her \"books\" and\n\"literature\"--a reservation of \"room\" which, under legal stress might\neasily be interpreted to mean the whole thing--it being distinctively a\n\"publishing house.\"\n\nWith Mother Eddy's donation of January 25th, 1898, she threw in \"The\nChristian Science Journal\" and \"all the literary publications of the\nSociety\"--these having been turned over to her with other things, for one\ndollar, on January 21st, 1898--she saving to herself \"only the right to\ncopyright the 'Journal' in her own name--an excellent way to make it\nself-supporting, with no liability on her part to incur its debts, while\nyet she could hold it under her absolute dictation.\n\n\"Let us endeavor,\" says the editor of \"The Christian Science Journal\"\n(February, 1898), \"to lift up our hearts in thankfulness to God ... and to\nhis servant, our Mother in Israel, for these evidences of a generosity and\nself-sacrifice that appeal to our deepest sense of gratitude, even while\nsurpassing our comprehension.\"\n\nNow such an evidence of generosity and self-sacrifice may intelligibly\n\"surpass\" the \"comprehension\" of any stipendary of Mrs. Eddy' paid to\nwrite such stuff as the foregoing; but Mary Baker Eddy's real bounty,\ngenerosity, self-sacrifice and benefaction, consisted in cancelling a\nmortgage of five thousand dollars, by which, on land thus obtained, a\nchurch costing other people two hundred and fifty thousand dollars was\nsoon built to her glory, she keeping a Shylock grip on the land, church\nand the adjacent property of her functionaries, with all its appurtenances\nthat were good for anything.\n\nWhen \"Mother Eddy\" casts a loaf of bread upon the waters, it is always\nsafe to look for a hundred loaves on the way back to her.\n\n\"The First Church Scientist\"--the edifice erected on Mrs. Eddy's donation\nof land--is a handsome structure of rough granite, looking something like\na small armory with a big tower. This sacred castle of \"metaphysics\" is\nsituated a little on the outskirts of residential fashion in the\nHub-City, the district thereof being the Back Bay. It is accessible to the\nworld, when once in Boston, by \"the electrics\" and a short walk. As a\nplace of scientifico-religious assemblage, the building seats twelve\nhundred actual \"scientists\" in the flesh, and the sympathetic spirits of\nsome twelve thousand other \"members,\" absent throughout the country. On\nthis account, some Eddyites who have never seen it regard its size as\nrivaling that of the earth.\n\nThe Cathedral (scientist) has much stained glass, and on nearly every\nwindow is depicted some Mary; for all _good_ Marys, particularly the Marys\nof the Bible, inferentially point to Mary Baker Eddy. This Mary's _Science\nand Health_ is exceedingly prominent in the multi-colored glass, and so\ngives countenance to all the representations taken from the Scriptures.\n\nAn organ is prominent--a large, harmonious present from a gentleman who\nthinks that somebody was cured of something by Christian Science.\n\nThe church has two pretty pulpits side by side, from one of which the\nBible is read, while from the other, that ancient book is kept straight\nby the reading of its only true meaning from _Science and Health_.\n\nSinging the praises of \"Immortal Mind,\" as discovered by Mrs. Eddy,\nconstitutes a part of the services, but there is no preaching--which is\njust as well, perhaps, but needs a word of explanation.\n\nPreaching used to be allowed \"in Science\"; but some of Mother Eddy's\napostles, having just enough knowledge for their creed, yet great gifts of\nspeech, sermonized, it is said, with such honest zeal that their eloquence\nwas in danger of casting an unglorified shadow on the Mother herself. It\nmust be stated, indeed, that sundry who have listened to St. Mary\n(scientist) affirm that her divine pen has always been much more potent\nthan her divine tongue. And some go so far as to declare that her sermons,\nwhen she preached, were often dull to the non-elect, even if they cured\nevery disease within ten miles of them. However these things may have\nbeen, Mrs. Eddy, early in 1895, issued the following ecclesiastical\nedict:[43]\n\n\"Humbly, and as I believe divinely directed, I hereby ordain that the\nBible and _Science and Health_ with _Key to the Scriptures_ shall\nhereafter be the only pastor of the Church of Christ, Scientist,\nthroughout our land, and in other lands.\"\n\nThis edict prevented Mrs. Eddy's theological subordinates from setting\nthemselves up on \"earthly pinnacles.\" Mother Eddy at the same time decreed\nthis:\n\n\"No copies of my books are allowed to be written, and read from\nmanuscript, either in private, or in public assemblies, except by their\nauthor.\"\n\nShe included the commandment that\n\n\"The reader of _Science and Health_ with _Key to the Scriptures_, shall\ncommence by announcing the full title of this book, with the name of the\nauthor, and afterwards repeat at each reading its abbreviated title.\"\n\nDirections followed regarding classes in \"Christian Science\"--the number\nof pupils each teacher might instruct, and the annual number of\nclasses--all to be taught \"from the Christian Science text-book.\"\n\nThus \"Mother\" Eddy's edict of 1895, abolishing pulpiteers \"in Science,\"\nwhile it redounded widely to her own glory, piously amplified, also, the\nproceeds of her \"precious volume,\" _Science and Health_. But to the\ninnocent lambkins of her church, she said:\n\n\"Teaching Christian Science shall be no question of money, but of morals\nand uplifting the race.\"\n\nSo that lovely bird, the ostrich, still buries her head in the sand, but\nleaves out much that ornaments the landscape.\n\nIn a rounded corner of the First Church Scientist, but conspicuous from\nthe main passage, is a little apartment celebrated as \"The Mother's Room.\"\nThere is no use of mentioning the Mother Church \"in Science,\" without\ndwelling on \"The Mother's Room.\" It is never done, especially by any\n\"Scientist.\" The Church is holy, throughout; but that room is the\ndemonstrated environment of Immortal Mind.\n\nThe entrance to \"The Mother's Room\" is through a white-marble arch,\nlustrous to behold. Over the door, cut into the marble, is the\ninscription, \"LOVE.\" It is not \"love of money,\" or \"love of flattery,\" but\njust \"LOVE.\" On the floor of the entrance we read in mosaic: \"Mother's\nRoom. The children's offering\"--which signifies that Mother Eddy knows how\nto attract the pennies of little Scientists as well as the dollars of her\nlarger infants.\n\nAs you enter the room, you tread on white-marble mosaic, sprayed with figs\nand fig-leaves, and you feel an emanation of pale green and old rose. If\nyou know your business, you are struck with awe on being in this\nholy-of-holies.\n\nOn your right is a mantel of white Italian marble and gold, with an open\nfireplace, wherein to throw all your mortal thoughts, that they may be\nconsumed. Opposite the mantel on your left, is a rather large painting,\nset back in the wall, but well lighted by electricity and divine science.\nIt shows the sacred chair in which Mrs. Eddy sat when she wrote _Science\nand Health_. The chair is empty--as typical, perhaps, of her departure\nfrom Boston when she closed her \"Metaphysical College.\" As Mrs. Eddy has\nno need of a table when she writes, but can perform miracles of literature\non a pad, the picture shows this phenomenon. Sheets of her manuscript are\nscattered on the floor, illustrating the logical chaos which fills them.\n\nA part of \"The Mother's Room\" is fenced off by a ribbon, to protect a rug\nmade from the downy breasts of five hundred eider-ducks. The legend, as\ntold by the guide, is that \"no man's hand ever touched this rug.\" It is\nsacred to the Mother's immaculate foot. But it was not manufactured by the\nAudubon Society.\n\nA beautiful showcase, of white and gold, ornaments the room, and in it are\nthe white and gold editions of Mrs. Eddy's works. They are samples of what\nyou can buy at the regular price, and are very tempting to wealthy\n\"scientists.\"\n\nThe Mother's room has a gorgeous bay-window, or three windows in one, of\nstained glass. The Mother herself is there, searching the Scriptures,\nencircled by a halo from the star of Bethlehem. The Christian Science seal\nis emblazoned on the window, and a little girl is there, reading _Science\nand Health_ to an old man. The little girl must be Mary Baker and the old\nman, probably, is Moses or Abraham. An alabaster bee-hive must not be\nforgotten, which contains the names of the little busy bees \"in\nScience\"--those children who squeezed out the cash to construct the room.\n\nAs you turn and go out, you observe, on the right, an alcove, which\ncontains a folding bed, to be pulled out into the main room in case of\nuse; for the alcove itself is almost as small as a mind that disagrees\nwith Mrs. Eddy.\n\nAt your left--still going out--there is a toilet-room, corresponding to\nthe alcove, but on the other side of the arch and doorway. In practical\nconstruction, this toilet-room is very much like other small inclosures\nadapted to the same ends. The chief difference, here, is that all the\nwater-pipes, faucets, and such fixtures, are plated with gold. Thus Mother\nEddy's lavatory proudly reminds her of Solomon's temple at Jerusalem.\n\nIt is said that \"Mother Eddy\" has never slept in \"The Mother's Room\" but\nonce. This one occasion, however, was quite enough to sanctify it\nforever.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X.\n\nA MARTYR TO \"SCIENCE.\"\n\n\n\"Christian Science,\" though its span be brief, has produced one of the\nmost exceptional martyrs that ever lived and prospered. It is a woman, of\ncourse; for men, as a rule, have now become too \"mortal-minded\" for\nsacrificial victims.\n\nThe lady referred to is a Mrs. Josephine C. Woodbury. Boston is her\nhabitat. She was long a follower of Rev. Mary Baker G. Eddy, and was a\npreacher of the gospel, _Science and Health_. She talked and prayed, she\nwrote and traveled, all \"in Science,\" until she became a public personage,\ncelebrated throughout the dominions of the Eddyites. Then at last there\nwas \"War in Heaven\"--which is the title of one of Mrs. Woodbury's\nbooks,[44] and she was excommunicated from the Mother Church Scientist of\nthe Boston Back Bay.\n\nNow Mrs. Woodbury is not a lady who can be excommunicated from a church\nwithout giving that church fair returns for the outlay. Mrs. Woodbury has\na pen, and there is black ink on it. She has attorneys quick to exchange\nlegal process for bank notes redeemable in gold. The lady has turned her\npen against \"Mother Eddy,\" and cast ink-spots on the \"Mother's\" religion,\nnot to say her personal character. The Woodbury lawyers have been let\nloose upon \"the Mother\" to sue for ethical redress and monetary\ndamages.[45]\n\nMrs. Woodbury entered \"Science\" very young--a fact on account of which let\nus excuse her, as well as we can, for ever entering it at all. She thought\nshe was one of the \"healed\" in the Eddy faith, and, later, she imagined\nthat her reading a passage or two from _Science and Health_ snatched one\nof her children from the jaws of death. Her _War in Heaven_ tells us this\nstory, and it may do no harm to trust it is true.\n\nMrs. Woodbury has the reputation of never doing things by halves, but of\nattending to business religiously, and of attending to religion in a\nbusiness way. Having once entered \"Christian Science,\" she pursued that\nvocation with great metaphysical and financial success, until suddenly, on\nthe 4th of April, 1896, came the bolt of excommunication.\n\nIt can readily be understood that conventional respectability is a\nnecessary and profitable department of \"The Eddy Church Scientist,\" and\nthat so shifty an ecclesiastic as \"Mother Eddy\" can scent opprobrium from\nafar. Whereto applies certain \"Christian-Science\" history.\n\nSoon after the excommunication of the apostle Josephine--the latter part\nof the same year--she was attacked at law by a Mr. Fred D. Chamberlain, in\nthe sum of twenty-five thousand dollars, on the charge that she had\nalienated the affection and companionship of his wife. The case got into\nprint, and being displayed under large heads in the Boston _Traveler_ of\nDecember 12th, 1896 and thereafter, a suit was instituted against Mr.\nChamberlain and that paper for libel.[46]\n\nIt appears from the files of the _Traveler_ that its industrious editor\ncollected a large variety of statements, letters, and interviews, for the\npurpose of showing his readers, that, among Mrs. Woodbury's religious\naccomplishments--whether it were due to suggestion, elective affinity,\nhypnotism, or Christian Science--she possessed a mighty gift of drawing\nsimple souls--the rich invariably preferred--into the select congregation\nof her fleecy followers. Then, at two hundred dollars a follower, she was\ndepicted as converting the sinners of other sects to \"Christian Science.\"\n\nIt will be observed that Mrs. Woodbury seemingly dealt in \"metaphysics\" at\ncut prices, the \"Mother's\" regular rate for instruction being three\nhundred dollars, not two hundred. But, for value received from Mrs.\nWoodbury's \"loyal students\"--she, like \"the Mother,\" so naming her\ndisciples--from seven to ten lessons only, according to the _Traveler_,\nwere imparted to them. Then the course was indefinitely repeated, in\naccordance with the demand that could be created for the healing staples.\n\nHere, to be sure, was something that might have greatly offended \"Mother\nEddy.\" Yet daughter Woodbury's cut prices were only colorable, not actual;\nfor, in the frequent repetition of the same wisdom and religiosity to the\nsame \"loyal students,\" she must have done less work for more money than\nwas ever done even in the Mother's college itself.\n\nAgain, if we follow newspaper files and court records in the case of the\nBoston _Traveler_,[47] we are told that Mrs. Woodbury had a family\ninterest in putting on the market certain stock in a hot-air engine--a\nkind of \"Christian Science\" stock in which, if her \"loyal students\" took a\nreligious flyer, their secular dealings would be sure to turn up with the\nright end in the air. This, perhaps, was a prime investment; but, on\ninvestigation, one \"loyal student\"--plaintiff Chamberlain of the suit we\nhave touched--somehow received the impression, though doubtless through\n\"mortal mind,\" that the holy engine stock had a slight smell of the Keeley\nmotor. Unetherealized man that he was, this affliction of his base common\nsense was the immediate cause, he declared, of all his trouble. His pious\nwife was unable to bear such an affront to divinity in the person of her\n\"teacher,\" St. Josephine Woodbury. So the \"teacher\" stuck to the wife, and\nthe husband was left out in the cold.[48]\n\nThat Boston newspaper, the _Traveler_, in spreading the Chamberlain\nunpleasantness, was assiduously biographical. Particulars can be\ncurtailed. It is only necessary to say that the distinguished Mrs.\nWoodbury was depicted as a self-made woman who had once been known to\nplain environments, but who, with preaching, healing, scientific religion\nand engine-stock, had become financially as well as spiritually beatified.\nFinally she had reached a shining abode on Commonwealth Avenue--that kind\nof mansion, in Boston, being the very next thing to \"a mansion in the\nskies.\"\n\nHer \"loyal students,\" it is true, were not represented by the _Traveler_\nas having been enriched in the same way. Still, if already wealthy, as\nmost of them were said to be, what was the use of it? Might they not\nbetter come unto St. Josephine Woodbury, and cast upon her the dross and\nsorrow of their material accumulations?\n\nAs described in the _Traveler_ print, these \"loyal students\" were, for the\nmost part, rather young people, rich in their own right, or so endeared to\ntheir parents that neither gold nor silver, if it could be given, was\ndenied to them. Once in the woods and groves of Teacher Woodbury's\n\"Christian Science\" paradise, these charmed innocents were turned into\nmissionaries to their families, where souls might be saved and further\npossessions might accrue to a blessed instructor. If the heads of these\nfamilies would not turn from the wicked ways of the world and their own\nchurches, and bring gifts to the shrine of Christian Science, then the\n\"loyal students\" were taught to shake the dust from their feet, and depart\nfrom among the unholy.\n\nThus were the Scriptures fulfilled \"in Science.\" But the _Traveler_ made\nit to appear that such doctrine set daughter against father, son against\nmother, and wife against husband.\n\nSo, indeed, the doctrine was made to appear in a letter written by Saint\nWoodbury herself and published in the _Traveler_ over her full name.[49]\nTherein was this preachment:\n\n\"The Bible says that the teachings of Jesus rightly practised, will,\n_must_, set at variance the members of any household, some of whom do, and\nsome of whom do not, imbibe the faith.... God's will be done. The command\nis still on the elect to come out from the world, and to separate and to\nshake the dust from their feet, of any house which will not receive the\npeace bestowed.\"\n\nMrs. Woodbury, having thus justified her religion and her economics by\nScripture, proceeded to justify Scripture itself by the Absolute--the\nexample of Mrs. Eddy. St. Josephine went on, in her letter, thus:\n\n\"When the Discerner of this Science first apprehended the demands of this\nReligion and system of ethics, she was forced to withdraw from the\nCongregational Church.... I have been informed, also, that not one of her\nfamily ever held her faith in anything but active contempt.\"\n\nThis latter revelation to St. Woodbury, regarding Saint Mary Baker Eddy\nand her relatives, is probably true. Others have received the same\ninformation. But when the chosen one was rejected of the Baker family,\nparticularly of its affluent members, it is affirmed that the spirit of\n\"Science\" arose within Mary, like a mighty tantrum, and, recalling her\nearly likeness to Samuel and the Hebrews, she exclaimed with \"immortal\nmind,\" \"I will yet roll in wealth!\" These words of the prophetess-Mother\nare sweet to the ear of Christian Science, which admonishes its adherents\nto go and do likewise--assuring them that if steadfast \"in Science,\" they\nwill be sure to stand solid in Dunn and Bradstreet.\n\nIt is well that our condition of existence, whatever may be its\nmetaphysical bases, is not all tragedy, but is relieved by a border of\ncomedy. According to a tale of Christian Science, as told by the Boston\n_Traveler_, Mrs. Woodbury, when in the prime of her healing illumination,\nwith its full returns, felt on one occasion that piety would be advanced\nif a \"loyal student\" of hers--a lady of means--should add a promising\nhusband to the true Church. It was done. Then, the ever-watchful \"teacher\"\nsent forth on the wedding tour a third \"loyal student\"--a virgin with her\nlamp trimmed and burning--to see that neither of the other twain should\nlapse from grace and the certainty of further contributions.\n\nThe complaint against the _Traveler_ newspaper got into court on the 11th\nof January, 1897. Short work was made of it. Notwithstanding all the\ndivine science incarnate in St. Josephine C. Woodbury, His Honor the\nJudge, Dewey by name, excluded her from the court-room, that she might not\ncontribute to the examination of her witnesses any eye-beams of hypnotism.\n\nAs this book is not designed to be improperly personal, but simply an\nexposition of the claims, doctrines, and effects, of Christian Science,\nall unnecessary use of individual names must be avoided. But a few are\nindispensable; and people who are mentioned here have already got\nthemselves corruscatingly into print.\n\nThe first witness for Mrs. Woodbury--who turned out also to be the\nlast--was a Mr. Alfred M. Potter. He testified that he was a brother of\nMrs. Fred D. Chamberlain--the lady said to be alienated from her\nhusband--and that he and his sister boarded with the Woodburys. He was\nestranged from his family, he said, except that one sister, but Mrs.\nWoodbury was not the cause of it.\n\nAs the _Traveler_ summed up one point of the court-records, Mr. Potter, in\nthe past year, had paid the husband of Mrs. Woodbury thirteen thousand\ndollars outside of board and room. He had paid Mrs. Woodbury \"between a\nthousand and eleven hundred dollars for instructions for himself.\" But, in\nthe summer of 1896, there was a European trip for Mr. Potter and the\nWoodburys. How could a \"loyal student,\" young and wealthy, venture abroad\nwithout his \"teacher?\" And why was not his money well expended for\nspiritual pleasures, on the way, if St. Josephine and Mr. Woodbury took\ngood care of Mr. Potter, and brought him safe home?\n\nBut the most extraordinary matter in connection with Mr. Potter's\ndepositions was a certain quasi-confirmation of a story that came to the\n_Traveler_ and had been published, alleging that, on the authority of Mrs.\nWoodbury, the ancient and most infinitely closed of all miracles, \"the\nimmaculate conception,\" had been repeated under the advanced dispensation\nof Mother Eddy's religion. Such was declared by various \"loyal students\"\nof Mrs. Woodbury to have been the claim of their exalted \"teacher,\" to\nwhom a son was born, named \"Prince,\" an abbreviation of his full title,\n\"the Prince of Peace.\" Mr. Potter came short of corroborating the whole of\nthis miracle, but gave substantially the version of it which Mrs. Woodbury\npresented to the public, after the trial, in the pages of her \"War in\nHeaven.\" There she says:\n\n\"On the morning of June 11th, 1890, there was born to me a baby boy;\nthough, till his sharp birth-cry saluted my ears, I had not realized that\nprospective maternity was the interpretation of preceding months of\nphysical discomfort.... An hour after the birth I rose. In the afternoon I\nwas up and dressed, and at night dined with my family.... We named our boy\nPrince Woodbury, partly because he came into our family as a veritable\nharbinger of peace.\"\n\nWitness Potter testified that he understood, through Mrs. Woodbury, that\n\"she had no knowledge of the birth of Prince\" until she found him with\nher. This circumstance, he understood, \"was through Christian Science.\"\n\nWhen Mr. Potter, with a straight, truthful, honest face, gave this\ntestimony, it naturally affected the gravity of the bench, the bar, and\nall others present, except Christian Scientists. There was reflected from\none to another the sardonic smile of \"mortal mind.\" But the case went on\nuntil presently a paper was put before Mr. Potter, by counsel for the\ndefense, that it might be identified.\n\nThe paper never got before the court. But the contents of it were very\npeculiar. The paper, in fact, was a brutally blunt form of retraction on\nthe part of Mr. Fred D. Chamberlain, of every derogatory criticism of Mrs.\nWoodbury he had ever made, and a meek submission to her brand of\n\"Christian Science.\" In the event of his not signing the paper, he was\ngiven to understand that he must depart from the abode of his wife.\n\nThe document, it appears, was in the handwriting of the \"loyal student,\"\nMrs. Chamberlain, and was dictated by Mrs. Woodbury. But when it was\npresented to Mr. Chamberlain for his signature, he had not only declined\nto attach his name to it, but had retained the document.\n\nThe Woodbury counsel quickly protested against the admission of such\nevidence, and the protest was judicious; for was not the whole case of\n\"alienation\" substantially set down on that paper? Hence, too, what would\nbecome of the libel-suit? But the court decided that the evidence was\nadmissible. Then, in such a shocking plight, what could an able Woodbury\nlawyer do but decline, with virtuous indignation, to go on further with\nthe case? The short of it was that Judge Dewey discharged the defendants,\nreprimanded the prosecution, and the noisy _Traveler_ had everything its\nown way.[50]\n\nAs for the Chamberlain suit for damages \"in Science,\" it was not pursued\nto the monetary end. It was soon ascertained that the wife really had more\naffection for her delectable \"teacher\" than any \"loyal student\" could be\nexpected to have for a mere husband. As a business necessity, a divorce\nwas then procured by Mr. Chamberlain, on the ground of desertion, and the\ntwain went separate ways.\n\nIt was not proved in Mrs. Woodbury's libel suit against the _Traveler_\nthat St. Josephine had claimed the full import of the _Traveler's_ story\nabout her \"Prince.\" The proceedings, we have seen, were prematurely\nstopped. But, after the newspaper's legal victory, it published sworn\nstatements from a number of people who would have been its witnesses had\nthe trial gone on. The most important was one made by Hon. George E.\nMacomber, an ex-mayor of Augusta, Maine.[51] In the regular form of a\nlegal deposition he declared that he had known Mrs. Woodbury for several\nyears, his acquaintance with her having come through his wife, who had\ntaken lessons of her. He said:\n\n\"My wife came one day and said Mrs. Woodbury had had a child down at Ocean\nPoint which was a 'Second Christ,' was immaculately conceived, and that it\nwas the duty of her students to make presents to this 'Second Christ.'\"\n\nMr. Macomber declined to make presents, and, according to his statement,\nhis wife's \"eyes were opened,\" after a while, and she \"pulled out\" of\n\"Science.\"\n\nThe _Traveler's_ other witnesses may pass. It is only essential to say\nthat they were numerous, and that they all agreed with Mr. Macomber. One\nof them testified, in an interview, that he had once gone so far in\nneglect of his own family as to make a will in favor of \"the Prince of\nPeace.\" But our direct point here is only this.--There would seem to be no\ndoubt that St. Josephine Woodbury's \"loyal students,\" far and wide, were\ncalled upon to bear gifts to her celestial son. Hence, his origin had\npalpable use as a financial mystery, whatever may have been its precise\ntheological bearings.\n\nIn \"Christian Science,\" the doctrine here recorded has been logically\ncoupled with another doctrine--that of inconnubiality in wedlock. This\ntenet, we can see, like the former, might result in money, goods and\nbequests, for some attractive \"teacher,\" which might otherwise be\nsquandered by a \"student\" in raising a family.\n\nBut the principle here imbedded \"in Science\" has not been special to Mrs.\nWoodbury. Mother Eddy herself is the crystal background of all good\nthings, and this one, with the rest, must be credited to the fountain of\nuniversal originality, _Science and Health_.[52] The pure simplicity of\nany being who can seriously read that book to the end, inevitably fits him\nto maintain with Christian Scientists, that, if children be not given to\nparents under physical laws, the science of perfect purity will\nultimately evolve \"_Children of the Soul_.\" \"My husband and I,\" recently\nexclaimed a vestal matron of Mrs. Eddy's following, \"have long lived\ntogether as brother and sister: isn't it beautiful?\" \"Perhaps it is,\"\nreplied another matron, thus addressed, \"but I am told it is generally\nimpracticable, except in Boston.\"\n\nWhen last heard from, our contemporary \"Prince of Peace\" was a pretty\nschool-boy of wit beyond his years. May the world smile kindly on \"Prince\nWoodbury,\" who is in nowise to blame for any new-fangled religion; but may\nheaven preserve him from any further involution with the sacraments of\n\"Christian Science.\"\n\nBefore bidding adieu to the heroine-martyr of our present chapter, one\nmore instance must be given of her work in a careless world--a very sad\ninstance, not to be treated lightly.\n\nAmong Mrs. Josephine Woodbury's \"loyal students\" for some time preceding\nthe year 1897, was a hand-maiden of \"Christian Science,\" one Mary Nash.\nThe story of poor little Mary was told in the Boston _Traveler_,[53]\nchiefly in the words of her father, when that paper was sued for libel \"in\nScience.\"\n\nMary Nash, as we summarize that story, lived at Augusta, Maine, and her\nfather, like our witness Macomber, had been a mayor of that city. He was a\nbusy man, but one who loved his daughter, and kept her in funds for what\nhe regarded as harmless fads and amusements.\n\nMary joined the \"loyal students.\" Then, little by little, she absented\nherself from Augusta, making frequent pilgrimages to Boston. The\npilgrimages grew in duration, until her home was seldom her habitation.\n\"Teacher\" Woodbury had not only changed her heart, but her whole tenor of\nmortal life, and Mary was completely born again into the most progressed\nfears and phases of \"Christian Science.\"\n\nLetters followed to her father, asking for money, and demanding that he\nand all his house should join \"the loyal students.\" He forwarded the money\nas occasion required, but his unregenerate neck stiffly declined\n\"Science.\" So Mary went no more to her father for weeks and months\ntogether. He sent her mother and brother to her, with prayers that she\nreturn to the family hearth-stone, if not to the family church. But she\nwas always sequestered from the influence of her relatives, by some \"loyal\nstudent\" or other in the Woodbury collection of dutiful freaks.\n\nMary's soul was much disturbed at times, notwithstanding the\nreligio-scientific consolations of her surrounding guardians. She began to\ndemonstrate, in her own scattered little person, the one everlasting\nassumption of \"Christian Science,\" that the human body is an illusion to\nbe dispelled. In other words, Mary Nash was fast sinking into what\nordinary doctors of medicine and divinity term illness, and it became\nextreme.\n\nThen, not for the first time, her father, went to Boston himself, to take,\nif possible, his daughter back to his care and her mother's heart, at the\nAugusta home. But still, still--unless by some accident of a moment--she\nwas always under the eye and the power of a \"metaphysical\" keeper. Then\nMary said \"no\"--she \"could not leave the fount of Christian Science.\" So\nshe stayed in Boston; for she was of age, and could select her castle and\ncompanionship while she had the ways and means to maintain them.\n\nNow what could a poor law-abiding citizen of New England, who had once\nbeen a mayor, do in such a case? Had Mary's father been a wild citizen of\nthe West or the South, he might have taken his handy \"gun\" along with him,\nand removed his child or \"cleaned out the ranch.\" But Maine and\nMassachusetts are too subdued for such stringent remedies. So Mayor Nash\nmourned of \"hypnotism,\" and offered--the distracted father that he\nwas--five hundred dollars, to release his daughter from the blessings of\nher religion. This mercenary offer was spurned, as suspect perchance in\nlegal and ecclesiastic form; but the way was pointed out in which the\nmoney might be received for lessons in Christian Science, at the Woodbury\ncut-rates.\n\nMeanwhile, it being ascertained that Mary Nash had a modest bank-account\nin her name, the money was sent for, by herself nominally, but visibly\nthrough a person in the number seven shoes of a \"loyal student.\" The bank\nmen--who were not \"in Science\"--declined to pay Mary's demand, and\nreferred the matter to her father. He agreed with the bank in holding the\nproceeds of his daughter's account, and his very stomach, not to say his\nsoul, rejected the thought of exchanging cash for religious instruction\nfrom Mrs. Josephine C. Woodbury.\n\nSo little Mary Nash became of no further promise to \"Christian Science.\"\nAnd there was no time to lose. Mary was plainly departing from the state\nof deception--certainly such to _her_--called \"earthly life.\" Hastily, at\nlast, she was permitted to journey home with her father, and presently the\nsad man laid his daughter away in what to him was death.[54]\n\nFrom the history of \"Christian Science\"--set down in these pages as the\nthing really is--it must be clear to anybody not quite emptied of all\n\"mortal sense\" that Mrs. Josephine C. Woodbury has been the most logical\nsequence, the most practical outcome, of the whole firmamental\nillumination.\n\nBut, that the Church of St. Bunco should grow and prosper--or should even\nhold its own among its honest innocents--it has been necessary for Mrs.\nEddy not only to preach \"love\" and \"purity\" in general, but to draw the\nline of practical conduct somewhere short of blackmail, larceny and\nhomicide. St. Josephine Woodbury never committed a sin in her life. Sin\nhas no reality \"in Science.\" Her \"loyal students\" would all have testified\nthat she was equal to any of the angels, if not better than the highest.\nYet a hard world around her, not understanding \"true religion,\" began to\nfancy, say in 1896, that she was not, every second, fulfilling all the ten\ncommandments. Then, besides her _War in Heaven_, the lady has written\nanother book, called _Christian Voices_, in which, the thought having been\nlong imputed to her, she asked the question, \"Who shall succeed Mrs.\nEddy?\" As _Science and Health_ declares there is no death, and as \"Mother\nEddy\" is specially immortal, St. Josephine's carnal talk of the \"Christian\nScience succession\" was naturally regarded \"in Science\" as worse than\nblasphemy. Thus many things worked together against St. Josephine\nWoodbury, until at last she sat on \"Mother\" Eddy's burning fagots and wore\nthe crown of martyrdom.\n\nThereat the world did not come to an end, but went right on with the\nproduction of quacks, dupes, and \"loyal students.\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XI.\n\nMETAPHYSICS.[55]\n\n\n\"Mother Eddy\" and her flock \"in Science\" derive a considerable part of\ntheir income from a glib use of the word \"Metaphysics.\" But what the\n\"Church Scientist\" has omitted to learn about the real import of that word\nwould make a volume even larger than _Science and Health_.\n\nAs unreservedly admitted in our present essay, there is no trouble about a\nspiritual derivation of the universe. In the declaratory, religious form,\nthe New Testament is a sufficient example of this doctrine. In the\nphilosophical form the names of Plato and Aristotle, both of whom\nresolved all things into the principle of \"Mind,\" summarized the subject\nfor the ancient world. The modern world has now given three hundred years\nto the same theme, and, however well or ill aware of the fact, has reached\nthe same end, but wholly without the assistance of any pushing, dodging\nadventuress, with a little set of abstract ideas and much screaming of\n\"Science.\"\n\nLeaving lighter themes for the moment, let us venture on a brief survey of\nthis ground.\n\nThere are just two possible ways of analyzing things. One way is to set\nthe world with its particulars before the eye, look at it, and accept what\nwe see. Then we may go to work on phenomena, dissecting and generalizing.\nThis is the way of physics--a road that _never_ leads to _meta_-physics.\nIt is the common turnpike of material science--of \"positivism.\" In it\ntravel all such men, say, as Dr. Ernst H\u00e6ckel: also all such men as the\nlate Parson John Jasper, the colored preacher of Virginia, who, seeing the\nsun move round the earth, settled the fact in that way.\n\nThe one other way of dissecting the universe is to examine the _means_\nthrough which things are presented to us, and thus to ascertain what\neffect the means may have in the production and nature of the things. This\nmethod of investigation has ultimated in what has been summed up as\n\"Scientific Idealism.\"\n\nScientific idealism is the knowledge which every one may get even from his\nfirst lessons in optics, that things of matter--the objects of our five\nsenses--are constituted such through the structure and action of these\nsenses themselves. That is to say, material things--whatever we see or\nfeel, hear, taste or smell--while existent and real--while practically\nwhat every one takes them to be--are _made so_ through _relativity_. Or,\nas Kant put it, every \"phenomenon\"--meaning every object or fact of\nsensation--is a \"_re_-presentation\"; that is, some lot of effects on our\nsensuous nature, bound together into a unity of them, the unity thus\nformed becoming an object of awareness, a \"percept.\"\n\nScientific idealism does not question the given duality of the cosmos,\nwhich appears to us as what we call \"mind and matter.\" Here are _we_; out\nthere, indubitably apart from us, are other things, involving another\nsource. But scientific idealism has found that this source is itself quite\nother than the things we connect with it, and can properly be described in\nthis connection only as _source of impact_. It has nothing to do with\nmatter, in the common acceptation. It enters _into_ matter, being the\nultimate non-ego, the objective background, of every phenomenon. But, in\nall material things, this background is _transformed_ by contact with\nsubjective sense (in us or other organisms), and \"matter\" is really the\nfusion, the compound, the third term, of these two elemental principles.\n\nThis momentous truth, though mystically reached in the old tenet of India\nthat \"matter is illusion,\" and though touched understandingly by Carneades\nin Greece, was first clearly seen, in the manner of modern science, by the\nremarkably solid Englishman, Thomas Hobbes.\n\n\"Qualities called sensible\" [said Hobbes] \"are, in the object that causeth\nthem, but so many several motions of the matter by which it presseth our\norgans diversely.... Because the image in vision, consisting of color and\nshape, is the knowledge we have of the qualities of the object of that\nsense, it is no hard matter for a man to fall into this opinion, that the\nsame color and shape are the very qualities themselves.\"\n\nBut, concluded Hobbes:\n\n\"The subject wherein color and image are inherent is not the object or\nthing seen.... There is nothing without us (really) which we call an image\nor color.... The said image or color is but an apparition unto us of _the\nmotion, agitation, or alteration, which the object worketh in the brain,\nor spirits, or some internal substance of the head_.... As in vision, so\nalso in conceptions that arise from the other senses, the subject of their\ninference is not the object, but the sentient.\"\n\nWhen John Locke began his great \"Essay\" on _The Human Understanding_, and\nposited mind in its first estate as a passive nonentity--a \"blank\ntablet\"--he had no vital conception of scientific idealism. But, in the\npatient thinking of twenty years, such a man could not fail to come upon\nthe law, though he saw it only in part, and did not work it out. This work\nwas carried a great way beyond him, by the acute and learned Bishop\nBerkeley, who showed from practical science, especially through his\ninvestigation of \"vision,\" that nothing in the universe has any actual\nbeing, apart from a universal element, that, wherever it may be posited,\ncan alone be called Mind.\n\nSince Berkeley, no philosophical thinker, perhaps, of any significance,\nanywhere in the world, has questioned the \"ideality\" of \"material things.\"\nEven Reid, as the philosopher of \"common sense,\" declared that\n\n\"No man can conceive any sensation to resemble any known quality of\nbodies. Nor can any man show, by any good argument, that all our\nsensations might not have been as they are, though no body, nor quality of\nbody, had ever existed.\"\n\nHume's comprehension of Scientific idealism was complete to his day, and\nwas completely stated. He said:\n\n\"'Tis not our body we perceive when we regard our limbs and members, but\ncertain impressions which enter by the senses; so that the ascribing a\nreal and corporeal existence to these impressions, or to their objects, is\nan act of the mind difficult to explain.\"\n\nThe idealism of recent \"materialistic\" philosophers, such as Herbert\nSpencer and the school of \"Positivists,\" has been most carefully expressed\nby John Stuart Mill, in his statement that \"Matter is a Permanent\nPossibility of Sensation.\"\n\n\"If\" [said Mr. Mill] \"I am asked whether I believe in matter, I ask\nwhether the questioner accepts this definition of it. If he does, I\nbelieve in matter; and so do all Berkeleians. In any other sense than this\nI do not.\"\n\nFor an easy, popular view of the principle of scientific idealism, perhaps\nnothing has been better said than by Thomas Carlyle, in his review of\nNovalis.\n\n\"To a transcendentalist [says Carlyle] matter has an existence, but only\nas a phenomenon. Were _we_ not there, neither would _it_ be there: it is a\nmere relation, or rather the result of a relation between our living souls\nand the great First Cause; and depends for its apparent qualities on our\nbodily and mental organs; having itself no intrinsic qualities; being, in\nthe common sense of the word, nothing. The tree is green and hard, not of\nits own natural virtue, but simply because my eye and my hand are\nfashioned so as to discern such and such appearances under such and such\nconditions. Nay, as an idealist might say, even on the most popular\ngrounds, _must_ it not be so? Bring a sentient being with eyes a little\ndifferent, fingers ten times harder than mine, and to him that thing which\nI call tree shall be yellow and soft, as truly as to me it is green and\nhard. Form the nervous structure in all points the reverse of mine, and\nthis same tree shall not be combustible and heat-producing, but dissoluble\nand cold-producing; not high and convex, but deep and concave; shall\nsimply have _all_ properties exactly the reverse of those attributed to\nit. There is no tree there; but only a manifestation of power from\nsomething which is not _I_. The same is true of material nature at large,\nof the whole visible universe, with all its movements, figures, accidents\nand qualities.\"\n\nScientific idealism, as far as we have gone with it, has now become one of\nthe \"_exact_\" sciences--as much so as physics. It has been simply the\nresult of continuous and innumerable experiments in natural philosophy,\nfor three centuries. There is no need of going into these physical\nparticulars, after they have been put into the school-books of children\nand explained in popular lectures. One more quotation must suffice. Mr. G.\nH. Lewes, in his _Biographical History of Philosophy_, tells us that\n\n\"The radical error of those who believe that we perceive things _as they\nare_, consists in mistaking a metaphor for a fact, and believing that the\nmind is a mirror in which external objects are reflected. But, as Bacon\nfinely says, 'The human understanding is like an _unequal mirror_ to the\nrays of things, which, _mixing its own nature with the nature of things,\ndistorts and perverts them_.' We attribute heat to fire, and color to the\nflower, heat and color being states of our consciousness, occasioned by\nthe fire and the flower under certain conditions. Perception is nothing\nmore than a _state of the percipient_, a state of consciousness.... Of\nevery change in our sensation we are conscious, and in time we learn to\ngive definite names and forms to the causes of these changes. But in the\nfact of consciousness there is nothing _beyond_ consciousness. In our\nperceptions we are conscious only of the changes which have taken place\nwithin us.... All we can do is to identify certain _external appearances_\nwith certain internal changes.... We conclude, therefore, that the world\n_per se_ in nowise resembles the world as it appears to us. Perception is\nan Effect; and its truth is not the truth of _resemblance_, but of\n_relation_.... Light, color, sound, taste, are all states of\nConsciousness; what they are beyond consciousness ... we cannot know, we\ncannot imagine, because we can only conceive them _as_ we know them.\nLight, with its myriad forms and colors--Sound, with its thousand-fold\nlife--make Nature what Nature appears to us. But they do not exist, _as\nsuch_, apart from our consciousness; they are investitures with which we\nclothe the world. Nature, in her insentient solitude is an eternal\nDarkness--an eternal Silence.\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XII.\n\nFURTHER ANALYSIS OF THE UNIVERSE.\n\n\nIn a previous chapter, some special reference has been made to a little\nGerman professor named Immanuel Kant. He was born at K\u00f6nigsberg, in 1724.\nIn 1781 he wrote a book which he called \"The Critique of Pure Reason.\"\nThis provokingly modest title, as already said, covered, in reality, _the\nanalysis of mind and matter, time and space_. It was the most far-reaching\npiece of purely intellectual work that had ever been given to the world.\nIt has split the heads of hundreds of \"philosophers.\" Certain thinkers\nhave fancied they have thought beyond it, and have supposed it to be laid\non the shelf of \"deceased philosophy.\" Meanwhile, we are told, the\nuniversities \"are returning to the study of Kant.\" Better still, some of\nthem are even beginning to understand him. Here we shall take him\nstraight, paying no attention to any of the side issues in which he was\napt to cover himself up.[56]\n\nKant, so learned that he was said to \"know everything,\" was completely\nacquainted with the whole trend of British philosophy, from John Locke to\nDavid Hume. He was saturated, too, with the physical sciences. So his\nfirst real step in his _Critique of Pure Reason_ was to found himself on\nthe all-inclusive law of scientific idealism. Immanuel Kant did not fool\nwith this law. He did not test it, prove it, and then let it slip out of a\nloose, greasy mind, as an airy nothing of no practical consequence. He\ngrasped it, and held it, as the bed-rock of all thought and all things. It\nis a pity he omitted to say so at the very first touch of his work. But he\nsaid it clearly enough when he happened to get ready. Thus, for\ninstance:[57]\n\n\"In order to prevent any misunderstanding, it will be requisite, in the\nfirst place, to recapitulate, as clearly as possible, what our opinion is\nwith respect to _the fundamental nature of our sensuous cognition in\ngeneral_. We have intended, then, to say that all our intuition is nothing\nbut the re-presentation of phenomena; that the things which we intuite are\nnot in themselves the same as our re-presentations of them in intuition,\nnor are their relations so constituted as they appear to us; and that _if\nwe take away the subject, or even only the subjective constitution of our\nsenses in general_, then _not only the nature and relations of objects_ in\nspace and time, _but even space and time themselves disappear_.... What\nmay be the nature of objects considered as things in themselves, and\nwithout reference to the receptivity of our sensibility, is quite unknown\nto us.\"\n\nAgain, in closing his dissection of space, Kant said:\n\n\"Objects are quite unknown to us in themselves, and _what we call outward\nobjects_ are nothing else but mere _re-presentations of our sensibility_,\nwhose form is space, but whose real correlate, the thing in itself, is not\nknown by means of these representations, nor ever can be, but respecting\nwhich, in experience, no inquiry is ever made.\"\n\nOnce more:\n\n\"The faculty of sensibility not only does not present us with any\nindistinct and confused cognition of objects as things in themselves, but,\nin fact, gives us _no knowledge of these_ at all. On the contrary, as soon\nas we abstract in thought _our own subjective nature_, the object\nre-presented, with the properties ascribed to it by sensuous intuition,\n_entirely disappears, because it was only this subjective nature that\ndetermined the form of the object as a phenomenon_.\"\n\nAfter awhile, under the maddening caption of \"The Possibility of a\nConjunction of the Manifold Representations given by Sense,\"[58] our\nGerman professor virtually crowded his whole work into this one paragraph:\n\n\"The manifold content in our re-presentations can be given in an intuition\nwhich is merely sensuous--in other words, is nothing but susceptibility;\nand the form of this intuition can exist _a priori_ in our faculty of\nrepresentation, without being anything else but the mode in which the\nsubject is affected. But the conjunction (_conjunctio_) of a manifold in\nintuition never can be given by the senses; it cannot therefore be\ncontained in the pure form of sensuous intuition, for it is a spontaneous\nact of the faculty of re-presentation. And as we must, to distinguish it\nfrom sensibility, entitle this faculty _understanding_, so all\nconjunction, whether conscious or unconscious, be it of the manifold in\nintuition, sensuous or non-sensuous, or of several conceptions, is an act\nof the understanding. To this act we shall give the general appellation of\n_synthesis_, thereby to indicate, at the same time, that _we cannot\nrepresent anything as conjoined in the object without having previously\nconjoined it ourselves_.\"\n\nAs to comprehend this paragraph is to analyze the universe, let us grapple\nwith it.\n\nImpatient Dr. Sam. Johnson once kicked a stone to refute Berkeley. Let us\ntake that stone, as a clump of matter, and treat it with the head instead\nof the foot.\n\n\"The manifold content in our re-presentations,\" says Kant, \"can be given\nin an intuition which is merely sensuous.\" This means simply that the\nvarious properties of the \"re-presentation\" or \"intuition\" called a stone\nare \"effects on the senses.\" The color, the texture, the weight, the\nsize--every one of all such \"material\" attributes--exist, as they are,\nsolely by relation to _me_, or to some other being in whom is organized\nthe element of \"sense.\" Matter is _made_ of impact--impact between its\nobjective background (\"the noumenon\" or \"noumena\") and some sort or degree\nof subjectivity. Without these two terms, their product of interaction,\ntheir third term, matter, is _not_. So \"the manifold content\" of a\n\"re-presentation\"--or, what is the same thing, the properties of a\nmaterial object--are \"nothing but susceptibility.\"\n\nBy \"the form of intuition,\" Kant meant, as he has repeatedly explained,\nthe _plural quality_ of space and time. Space is made of _spaces_; time of\n_times_; and the plural contents (always such) of matter can only exist\nunder the plural contents of space and time--that is, in sections of space\nand sequences of time, these sections and sequences being the intrinsic\ncharacter, the divisible quality, the essential \"form\" of space and time\nas total units or completed things. And the nature of space and time need\nnot be anything more _objective_ than the nature of matter in general, but\ncan be derived, too, from \"the mode in which the subject is affected.\"\n\"But,\" says Kant, \"_all conjunction_\" is \"an act of the understanding,\"\nand \"can not be contained in the pure form of sensuous intuition\"; by\nwhich he means that time could never be a conjunct of times, space a\nconjunct of spaces, nor a stone the conjunct of its properties--each a\n\"synthesis\" of a \"manifold content\"--unless made so by the synthetical\nunity of _a priori_ mind.\n\nKant attributes \"_unconscious_\" action to the \"_understanding_\"--the\nunconscious action of \"conjunction\" or \"synthesis.\" His phrase has been a\nperpetual stumbling-block to his readers, but he meant exactly what he\nsaid. Unconscious mental synthesis is what he afterward designated as \"the\nsynthesis of _apprehension_.\"\n\n\"By the term _synthesis_ of apprehension [said he], I understand the\ncombination of the manifold in an empirical intuition, whereby perception,\nthat is, empirical consciousness of the intuition (as phenomenon), is\npossible.\"\n\nKant talks of \"making the empirical intuition of a house into a\nperception, by apprehension of the manifold contained therein,\" and says\nthat \"the _necessary unity of space_ and of my _external sensuous\nintuition_ lies at the foundation of this act.\" The \"manifold\" contained\nin an \"empirical intuition\"--take the stone we have used for an\nexample--is simply the diversity of \"properties,\" constituting the\nobject--the color, texture, size, weight, and the rest of them; and these\nproperties are \"effects of sense.\" Every one of them is a relation to\nsubjectivity, a result of impact _on_ subjectivity, and is in the _object_\nonly as reflecting or _re_-presenting there the sensuous nature of a\n_subject_. But these various \"effects on various senses,\" these merely\nsubjective separates--how do they _get united_ into _one thing_? What\nconstitutes the unity of sensuous manifolds? Every phenomenon being an\nessential plurality--a lot of \"sense-effects\"--what closes together the\nvarious effects on various human senses, called the properties of a stone,\ninto the one phenomenal object, the stone itself. To this end there must\nbe some common subjective ground of those subjective things, \"effects on\nsense.\" There must be some subjective unity in which those subjective\npluralities all merge, for only as _merged_ do they get to be an _object_.\nNow, a common subjective ground of various effects on various senses can\nonly be a common _awareness of them_--a _synthetical unity of\napprehension_, or just instinctive, automatic consciousness in the germ.\nThis must be common to all the senses together, and to each sense\nseparately. What, for example, is seeing, but the simple awareness of\nsight? What is touch, but the simple awareness of feeling? What is any\n\"intuition,\" which means any taking-in of any phenomenon, but a common\nawareness, however rudimental or developed, of some conjoined diversity of\neffects on sense?\n\nIt must be added here, as vital to the full comprehension of the genesis\nof matter, that not only every material object, like our example, the\nstone, is made of essential plurality of sense-effects, but that _every\nseparate property_ of an object is also made of like plurality. No object,\nand no property of an object, is, or can be, single, unal, or, in other\nwords, _anything_, until constructed so, in sense, by the \"unconscious\nunderstanding\" thereof--the synthetical unity of instinctive, automatic\n\"apprehension.\" To realize this fact, it is only necessary to remember\nthat every property of anything, say the hardness of a stone, is a\ncompound relation between the impact of some ultimate non-ego on the sense\nof touch, and the peculiar nature of the sense itself: so the property of\nhardness must contain _essential diversity_, something from each of _two\nfundamental sources_. As Aristotle, from his ontological investigations,\nfound that matter, if regarded as an absolute independence--an unrelated\nthing in itself--is _no thing_, but only chaotic\nindeterminateness--formless \"potentiality\"--so Kant, from his\npsychological inquiry--his dissection of phenomena as existent through\nperception--found the same truth in deeper significance. The _entire\nprinciple of unity_, Whether in a feeling, a thought, a material object,\nor the universe as a whole, _can only exist through the principle of\nmind_.\n\nHere is the very bottom of the discoveries of Kant, and the basis, also,\nof all things.\n\nMind, then, in its lowest state, is what Kant, \"to distinguish it from\nsensibility,\" entitled \"unconscious understanding.\" There used to be an\nold saw in philosophy--still, indeed, at work--to the effect that \"there\nis nothing in the mind that was not first in sense.\" Leibnitz, adding a\npiece to the saw, said: \"Except mind itself.\" Leibnitz affirmed, that is,\nthat sense always _contains_ mind--that mind is _in_ sense as a component\nof it, and that without mind there is no sense at all. What Leibnitz\nperceived and asserted, Kant _proved_ by \"observation and induction\"--by\nanalyzing phenomena under the law of scientific idealism. Mind in\nsense--the mind of sense--is just _automatic animal awareness_, just\n\"simple apprehension,\" undeveloped, and in the lowest animal life not to\nbe developed, into \"apperception,\" the _conscious_ stage of understanding,\ncapable of forming a _concept_.\n\nWell, in the genesis of a stone, or any other material object, certain\neffects on sense are merged in the unit they compose, by reception into\nthe \"synthetical unity of apprehension.\" The stone is _created_ in this\nway. Its own objective unity--its wholeness, or \"_form_\" as a stone--is\nthus the derivation, the manufactured product, of _subjectivity as a\ncosmic element_, an element \"_a priori_\" to the existence of any possible\nphenomenon.\n\nThe stone, however, _is_ unmistakably objective--is just the palpable\nthing that everybody takes it to be, out there in space. This is a given\n_fact of perception_--something, as Kant said, \"never questioned in\nexperience.\" As such _fact_, how can it be accounted for, when we know, at\nthe same time, that the stone is nothing but a plexus of subjective\nstates? How does the bunch of _internal impressions_ get _externalized_?\nWhat is the cause of this reflex, this \"_re_-presentation\"? It must be\nsomething inherent in the principle of _apprehension itself_, or the\nplexus of impressions would necessarily stay within us. Being wrought\ninternally, it would remain internal. Hence, this \"apprehension\"--this\nelement of instinctive synthetical awareness--must be in its nature a\n_double_--an entity which reproduces, or throws out before itself,\nwhatever lot of sense-effects it receptively synthesizes, or binds\ntogether in a sheaf, known as some object. But all this, summed up, means\nonly that mind, even in its lowest form of \"unconscious\nunderstanding\"--the simple automatic apprehension which shuts together\ncertain effects on sense into a totality of them--must, _as being\napprehension_, necessarily, though instinctively, apprehended its own\nproduct. Here is the full explanation of the amusing, iron-clad conception\nof Hobbes, that an \"image,\" or a \"color,\" is but an apparition unto us of\n\"motion, agitation, or alteration\" in some \"internal substance of the\nhead.\"\n\nThe self-reflexiveness of \"apprehension\" is precisely the same thing, _in\ngerm_, that the self-reflexiveness of \"apperception\" is, in _full\nself-consciousness_.\n\nThe self-reflexiveness of apprehension, in the manufacture of phenomena,\nwas named by Kant \"_the transcendental synthesis of imagination_\"--the\nword \"imagination\" standing on its roots, and meaning _the image-making\nfaculty_. Phenomena, as reflex-conjuncts of sense-effects, are\n\"produced\"--put out--by this second function of apprehension; so Kant said\nhe sometimes called it \"productive imagination.\" It is that function of\npure elemental, or _a priori_ awareness, which \"_re_-presents\" itself in\nthe constitution of every object, as its _unity_, but a unity _shaped_\naccording to some object's filling of senses-effects. Hence Kant says:\n\n\"This synthesis of the manifold of sensuous intuition, which is possible\nand necessary _a priori_, may be called figurative synthesis (_synthesis\nspeciosa_).\"\n\nThus Kant found mind in sense, \"unconscious understanding,\" the\ninstinctive awareness of animal susceptibility, as it existed in himself,\nto be the literal objective basis of all phenomena--the first \"material\"\nunity of every \"material thing.\" And he found this elemental source of all\nunity to be an innate self-activity--a self-seeing mirror, as it were--a\ndouble of receptiveness and reflectiveness. Here, at last, was the actual,\n_living thing_, of which Locke's \"blank-tablet\" had long been the\nstill-born, stone figure.\n\nMr. Herbert Spencer, in his remarkable investigation of \"The Principles of\nPsychology,\" posits \"mind\" as always implied in sentiency, and as\nnecessary to the genesis of any phenomenon, even the \"first nervous shock\"\nof a sensitive being. Recognizing the law of scientific idealism, he has\nseen, too, that our objective world is made up, at the perceptional\noutset, of such shocks. Again, he has proved, with great detail, that the\naction of mind is always of one general nature, whether in the lowest\nanimal instinct or the highest conscious reason. But back at the first\nnervous shock, Mr. Spencer _stops_ with mind, and says that at the next\nregress it becomes \"unknowable.\" Yet nearly a hundred years before this\ninvestigation Kant showed precisely what this so-called \"unknowable\" _is_.\nHe showed that mind, in all stages and states--mind in itself--is a\nsynthetical unity of awareness. In germ, as \"unconscious\nunderstanding\"--as the mind of sense--its function is to be simply\napprehensive of, and thus to conjoin in its instinctive cognizance, some\n\"manifold\" contained in a \"nervous shock,\" or in various sense-effects,\ninto some _unity_; which then, as _itself apprehended_, or _made a\nreflex_, becomes an impression, an image, an object.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIII.\n\nA SPECIAL LOOK AT SPACE AND TIME.\n\n\nThrough scientific idealism, fully examined, Kant proved that matter is a\nmanufacture of sense. We have not followed the order of his work, but have\ngone straight to the heart of it. His own beginning was the dissection of\nspace and time. Still, he implied therein, if only in one remark, all that\nhas here been stated.\n\n\"If I take [says Kant] from our representation of a body, all that the\nunderstanding thinks as belonging to it, as substance, force,\ndivisibility, and also whatever belongs to sensation, as impenetrability,\nhardness, color, there is still something left us from this empirical\nintuition, namely _extension and shape_. These belong to pure intuition,\nwhich exists _a priori_ in the mind, as a mere form of sensibility, and\nwithout any real object of the senses or any sensation.\"\n\nStudents of Kant have known, in a general way, that he attributed\n\"extension\" to \"bodies,\" as derived by them from _a priori_ mind. _Space_\nis so derived; hence all things _in_ space, which is the \"form,\" the\n\"condition\" of their existence, must partake of its nature, which is pure\nextension, pure \"given quantity,\" as he designates it. But why does the\n_shape_ of a material body belong to \"pure intuition,\" and _come from\nmind_? Simply because the shape (let it be of a stone) is merely the\n_objected_ \"_synthesis of apprehension_,\" in which the properties of the\nstone, as impressions of sense, are _unified_, but in accordance with\ntheir special variety. The shape is their \"figurative synthesis,\" their\n\"_synthesis speciosa_.\" Now, in the meaning of Kant, and in the nature of\nthe case, space is _made_ in precisely the same _manner_ as a stone; only\nthe stone is full of diverse properties--special effects on sense, got\nfrom some impinging background of matter--some \"noumenon\"--while space has\nno properties at all, except additions and divisions of _itself_--spaces.\nIn other words, the stone is a _special_ relation between mental synthesis\nand sensuous susceptibility, the latter being in particular impact with\nsome noumenal non-ego, and being definitely _filled_ from it. Space, on\nthe other hand, is a _general_ relation between the same mental synthesis\nand the same sensuous susceptibility, the latter holding _no contents_\nfrom any noumenon, yet being recipient to _all_ possibility of noumenal\nimpact. Hence, space is just \"the synthesis of apprehension\" itself, set\nin self-reflex, objected, phenomenated. The stone, in its unity, its form,\nits \"shape,\" is this objected synthesis of apprehension, _filled_ with\ncertain sensuous effects. The synthesis of apprehension, again, as the\ncondition of any special \"shape\" into which it may be stuffed, is of\ncourse _a priori_ to _the_ stuffed shape; so space is _a priori_ to the\nstone in space. Once again, space is the outward representation, the very\ndouble to the eye, of the synthesis of apprehension; for space is just the\n_visible synthesis of the apprehended_--the transparent base of\nco-existence for all external things.\n\nIt must be remembered that the synthesis of apprehension, as the \"mind\" of\n\"sense,\" is itself a _double_, containing the pure conjunctive unity of\n\"unconscious understanding\" as an active factor, and susceptibility to\nimpact as a passive factor. In the conjoined relation of these two factors\nevery material phenomenon gets to exist; so there must be _some_ relation\nof space to _every_ external object, and to _all_ external objects--which\nis to say at once that space is _infinite_, both in extent and\ndivisibility, so far as it can apply to objects _at all_.\n\nAnd here, too, is the reason that the contained character, the constituent\nquality, of space--meaning what Kant termed the \"form of the\nintuition\"--is essentially plural. This constituent quality of space is a\n_re_-presentation of mind, as at once active and passive, receptive and\nreflexive--as fundamental _a priori_ self-separateness. But _space\nitself_, as a _whole_, is the _synthesis_ of this self-separateness. It is\nself-unity of self-separateness, _materialized_. Space, made of spaces, is\na thing identical in form and contents. Kant said:\n\n\"Space _re_-presented as an _object_ (as geometry really requires it to\nbe) contains more than the mere _form of the intuition_; namely, a\ncombination of the manifold given according to the form of sensibility\ninto a representation that can be intuited; so the _form of the\nintuition_ gives us merely the manifold, but the _formal intuition_ gives\nunity of re-presentation. In the '\u00c6sthetic,' [the first division of _The\nCritique of Pure Reason_], I regarded this unity as belonging entirely to\nsensibility, for the purpose of indicating that it antecedes all\nconceptions, although it presupposes a synthesis which does not belong to\nsense, through which, however, all our conceptions of space and time are\npossible.... By means of this unity alone (the understanding determining\nthe sensibility) space and time are given as intuitions.\"\n\nIt is easy enough to follow out the genesis of time, in the same way as\nthe genesis of space. The constituent quality of space and time is the\nsame in both, and is subject in both to the same act of synthesis, in\norder that the essential plurality of \"the form of intuition\" may be\ncreated into the unity of \"the formal intuition\" itself--the single thing,\nspace or time. But time is the \"form\" of \"_in_-ternal sense,\" as Kant put\nit, while space is the \"form\" of \"_ex_-ternal sense\"--sense being to Kant\nnot its physical organs (which are matter), but mental _susceptibility_ as\ndistinguished from mental _synthesis_. Every phenomenon in space is made\nof active subjective-synthesis, passive subjective-susceptibility, and\nnoumenal impact. Space and time themselves are made of the synthesis and\nthe susceptibility alone. But pure synthesis, which means just pure\nidentity of awareness, can _have_ no \"susceptibility,\" cannot be\n_occupied_, without _change of state_; and any change of state in a pure\ngeneral awareness forms succession of states, or, as Kant said,\n\"_generates time_.\" But conjunction, again, of synthesis and\nsusceptibility must be the relating of separates, with reference to the\nobjective as well as the subjective factor. As objective effect this\nrelation is pure co-existence of separates in time, through outness from\neach other--space. All objects, impressions, \"effects of sense,\" must take\nthe order of time; but \"objects of internal sense\" (feelings, or\nemotions), having no direct filling from noumena, are not objects in\nspace. Thus, while space is pure synthesis of apprehension _ex_-ternally\nobjected, time is the same pure synthesis of apprehension _in_-ternally\nobjected.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIV.\n\nCREATIVE MIND FURTHER PROBED.\n\n\nThe inmost secret of the universe lies in Kant's four words, \"the\nsynthesis of apprehension,\" or what he more elaborately termed \"the\ntranscendental synthesis of the image-making faculty.\"\n\n\"It is an operation [he says] of the understanding on sensibility, and the\n_first_ application of the understanding to objects of possible intuition,\nand at the same time _the basis for the exercise of the other functions of\nthat faculty_.\"\n\nIt has been intently presented to view in these pages, because it\nfocalises and explains the whole law of scientific idealism, and is the\none most important as well as abstruse fact in the genesis of things.\n\nBut having duly dealt with this point, it must now be said that \"the\nsynthesis of apprehension,\" _alone_ and _ungrown_, is altogether\ninadequate to give form to an object, in the full import of that word. For\nan _object_ is something held distinct by itself, in connection with\nanother object, or with various objects. \"_Unconscious_ understanding\"\ncannot form such connection and distinction, but can only blindly\nmanufacture single intuitions, affording at most what Kant termed \"a\nrhapsody of perceptions,\" in which no one would be first or last, or\nanything at all when past. A fish-worm, perhaps, has such a \"rhapsody of\nperceptions\" for its objective world. In the world of man the _a priori_\nelement of intelligence which shapes it must be objected in the phase of\nconsciousness proper, or \"apperception,\" as well as \"simple apprehension.\"\n\nIn noting the difference between the synthesis of apprehension and the\nsynthesis of apperception, Kant said:\n\n\"It is one and the same spontaneity which, at one time under the name of\nimagination, at another under that of understanding, produces conjunction\nin the manifold of intuition.\"\n\n\"Apperception\" is simply apprehension _apprehended_, or mind adequate to\nself-conception and so to conceptions in general. That there can be a\nstone, as known to a _human being_, there must be a synthesis of\nsense-effects (its properties), in which they are distinguished among\nthemselves, and of which objects as wholes are distinguished from each\nother. A synthesis of this kind presupposes not merely \"unconscious\nunderstanding,\" but understanding that recognizes _itself_ in connecting\nall things else.\n\n\"I am conscious [said Kant] of my identical self in relation to all the\nvariety of representations given to me in intuition, because I call all of\nthem _my_ representations.... The thought, 'These representations, given\nin intuition, belong all of them to me,' is just the same as 'I unite them\nin one self-conscious.'... Synthetical unity of the manifold in intuition,\nas given _a priori_, is therefore the foundation of the identity of\napperception itself, which antecedes _a priori_ all determinate thought.\nBut the conjunction of representations into a conception is not to be\nfound in objects themselves ... but is on the contrary, an operation of\nthe understanding itself, which is nothing more than the faculty of\nconjoining _a priori_, and of bringing the variety of given\nrepresentations under the unity of apperception. This principle is the\nhighest in all human cognition.\"\n\nSo, to the _existence_ of any _distinguishable object_, there must\n_pre-exist_ the element of mind in the phase of _self_-consciousness as\nwell as _sub_-consciousness. Both must enter the object. Hence, when Kant\ntalked of \"_the objective unity of self-consciousness_\"--another of his\nprofoundest deductions--he meant literally that \"the synthetical unity of\napperception,\" as well as \"the synthetical unity of apprehension,\" is\n_materialized_ in all _conceivable things_. To form the sense-effects of a\nstone into a single \"intuition,\" they must be merged in a synthesis of\napprehension; but to _set_ the intuition as thus created--to make it\nremain _itself_ in the midst of _others_, it must be merged with them in a\nhigher synthesis--a common connective consciousness, which, distinguishing\nthem in itself, re-presents them as distinguished.\n\nIt was here that Kant reached his famous \"_Categories_,\" which are merely\nreflexes of the pure synthetical unity of mind, as forming the unity of\nall things and of all connection among them.\n\nThe principle of mind, beginning, as we have seen, even with the\ninstinctive mind of sense, is a spontaneous self-activity, receptive,\nreflexive, and resumptive of its doubles. By being the first, it unifies\nany and every manifold of sense-effects; by being the second, it\n_re_-presents the product--throws it _out_; by being the third, it\napprehends the externalisation, and a percept is born. Apperception, or\nfull consciousness, is the same self-activity, self-reflex, self-sight,\ntransformed into \"understanding.\" Thus, mind is essentially a _triad_ as\nwell as a _unit_. But, if so, it must reflect itself to conception as a\n\"_Quantity_\"--a sum of its own phases; and in these phases, it is a\n\"Unity,\" a \"_Plurality_,\" and a \"_Totality_.\"\n\nMind, again, as just _a-priori_ principle and basis of all things, is\nmanifestly their universal \"Quality.\" But, as self-reflexive,\nself-resumptive, it is at once a \"_Reality_,\" a \"_Negation_,\" and a\n\"_Limitation_,\" which means it is that which, in its double, contraposes\none state to another, while, as a whole, it is the limit of both states.\n\nIt goes without saying that a principle of self-reflex is the \"Relation\"\nof its reflexes, and in this relation is a \"_Substance_ with\n_Dependence_,\" a \"_Cause_ with _Effect_,\" and a \"_Reciprocity_\" of its\nseparates.\n\nThis is a very short cut to the Kantian Categories, but sufficient,\nperhaps, if we bear in mind that, while _implicit_ in the mind of sense,\nthey are reflexes of conscious, not \"unconscious\" understanding. The\nsynthesis of mind through conceptions proceeds, not by the formation of\nsense-effects into units of intuition, but by the formation of these\nalready-made units (objects or their properties) into species, genera, and\nultimate universals--the pure unity of these groupings, without regard to\nthe things grouped, being just the pure _a priori_ unity of self-conscious\nawareness. Thus, those ultimate universals, the categories, are objective\nreproductions of pure conceptive synthesis, without which there could be\n_no connection of things in thought_--which would amount precisely to no\n_realised objects_ and no _objective experience_.\n\nOne of Kant's industrious reviewers, Sir William Hamilton, fancied that\nAristotle's categories were \"genera of real things,\" while Kant's\ncategories were \"determinations of thought,\" and, as mere \"_entia\nrationis_,\" must \"be excluded from the Aristotelic list.\" But there are no\n\"genera of real things\" except _as_ \"determinations of thought\"; and, in\nmaking an experimental classification of objects, Aristotle found some of\nthe Kantian categories, because the synthetical unity of mind had put\nthose categories into the objects at the creation of them. To Kant an\n_object_ meant something of which Sir William Hamilton had no boding.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XV.\n\nTHE GENESIS OF \"TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAS.\"\n\n\nIt must now be easy to see that mind, in its general form, is\nthree-in-one--a triad. It is a self-reflexive, self-related unit, of three\nphases. The first phase is automatic \"apprehension.\" The second is\nconscious \"understanding.\" The third, which we touch here, is \"reason.\" In\nreason, mind is still the general cosmic principle of awareness, with the\nfunction of synthesis, or conjunction. As intuition, it has perceived\nthings. As conception, it has classified them. As a last synthetical unity\nof awareness, it must include, or \"comprehend\" them--must relate them to\nits conjunctive unity in their full scope, which means simply in the\nultimate reflexes, or forms, of its own nature and action. As process,\nthis can only be done by referring all things to pure synthesis, or\nconnective identity, as _final cause_.\n\n_Seeing_ things, and then _thinking_ them, we always end by asking,\n\"_Why?_\" They _are_, each and all so and so; but what is the \"_reason_\"\nfor it? The pure _form_ of answer, apart from all contents, is\n\"_because_\"--on account of _cause_. Thus reason forms its synthesis of\ncomprehension by referring the particular to the general for a cause--a\nprocess that can never stop short of including all things in ultimate\nunities of cause. It is evident that ultimate unities of cause must\ncontain all subordinate causes or conditions under them. There can be just\nthree such ultimate unities; for there are just three possible kinds of\nbeing and conditions that relate to their universals: subjective being and\nconditions to subjective unity of them; objective being and conditions to\nobjective unity of them; and all being and conditions, both subjective and\nobjective, to the universal unity of being and conditions. These final\nunities, again, _as_ final--as totalities of conditions with none\nbeyond--are themselves \"unconditioned.\"\n\nReason, then, as an _a-priori_ synthetical unity, necessarily refers all\nconditions of things to their final or absolute unities, which are in\nreality nothing but conceptional reflexes of Reason's _own constructive_\nsynthetical identity. To _be_ an identity of mind, for instance, to the\nconditions of subjectivity, reason must receive _them_ into _its_ unity,\nwhich thus becomes _their_ totality. Now what is the objective\nre-presentation, the rational conception of the totality of subjective\nconditions? It is simply the \"transcendental idea\" of pure subjectiveness,\nor Soul. In the same way the totality of objective phenomenal conditions,\nis the idea of the Universe; while the totality of _all_ conditions, both\nsubjective and objective, is the idea of that in which all mind and all\nmatter are related as their final cause or reason--God.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVI.\n\nTHE GRAND RESULT OF DISSECTING PHENOMENA.\n\n\nSince the days of Immanuel Kant, no philosophy, no rational theology, no\nultimate science, not referring to the results of his work, has had any\nreal basis in thought--the reason being that he saw through, and\nexplained, the principle of universal relativity, the law of scientific\nidealism, and relaid the whole structure, from the corner-stone up.\n\nBefore Kant it was known well enough that \"matter,\" however we must all\naccept it with our hands and eyes, has no standing, under the analysis of\nthought, except as a system of effects on ourselves. Hume, we remember,\nsaw all this so clearly that he pronounced the very organs of sense, \"our\nlimbs and members,\" to be \"not our body,\" but \"certain impressions\" to\nwhich the mind ascribes \"a corporeal existence.\" Our limbs and members\ncertainly _are_ our body--the only body we have--but Hume was right in his\nmeaning that our body is a phenomenon which has no existence but as a\nplexus of impressions on a principle of intelligence, possessing various\nmodes of reception, named senses. But this _principle_ of _intelligence_\nitself was, to Hume, not a fact to be grasped by \"reason,\" not a principle\nto be known and described, but was to be taken as a \"force and vivacity\"\nunknowable beyond an _instinct_ of it. Hume's unknowable \"force and\nvivacity\"--an improved form of Locke's \"blank-tablet\"--Kant _analyzed_ in\nthe light of its products; namely, those conjuncts of sense-effects called\nobjects; those conjuncts of objects called species, genera, and\ncategories; and finally those conjuncts of all things and all conditions\nof things, called transcendental ideas. Now, such conjuncts of various\n\"manifolds\" actually exist. They are man's percepts and concepts; they are\nhis facts, his environment. But _as_ percepts and concepts, and always\nconjuncts of \"the manifold,\" they are formed, organized, totalized,\nthrough a _principle_--the principle of perception and conception itself.\nThis is Kant's _a-priori_ synthetical unit, common and necessary to all\n\"things\" and to all \"experience.\"\n\nThe last word of any weight, against this reduction of matter to mind, was\nsaid a few years ago by that exceptionally acute thinker, Professor\nHuxley, in his summary of Hume. Too able and learned, both as philosopher\nand scientist, to question idealism, Huxley admitted it unqualifiedly.\nBut, not having gone beyond the British proofs of it, he defended what is\ncommonly called \"materialism\" in this way:\n\n\"If we analyze the proposition that all mental phenomena are the effects\nor products of material phenomena, all that it means amounts to this: that\nwhenever those states of consciousness which we call sensation, or\nemotion, or thought, come into existence, complete investigation will show\ngood reason for the belief that they are preceded by those other phenomena\nof consciousness to which we give the names of matter and motion. All\nmaterial changes appear, in the long run, to be modes of motion; but our\nknowledge of motion is nothing but that of a change in the place and order\nof our sensations; just as our knowledge of matter is restricted to those\nfeelings of which we assume it to be the cause.\"\n\nTo this last posture of materialism, a competent understanding of Kant is\nthe _only reply that has ever been needed_. It is simply of no consequence\nto the case what states of consciousness precede or follow other states of\nconsciousness. Let it be granted (whether true or not) that \"phenomena of\nconsciousness to which we give the names of matter and motion\" precede all\nothers. What of it? Kant has proved to us that _no_ phenomenon of\nconsciousness--no matter, no motion, no sensation--and, beyond all these,\nno time and no space, in which all the rest appear--has, or can have, _any\nexistence_, except as put into unity, form, and order, by the unity, form,\nand order of mind. If both \"the synthesis of apprehension\" and \"the\nsynthesis of apperception\" enter into any state of consciousness named\nmatter, _to give it birth_, there is no possibility that the element of\nintelligence can be an _after-birth_ of the process.\n\nAll our objects, then, from a germ cell to the horizon, are constructed\nsuch through a mental principle innate in our own structure. But here it\nmust be re-iterated and re-emphasized that whatever we, as units of mind,\nmay embody in objects as _form_, the _filling_ of them is not ours. It\nhas a source apart. The filling of our objects comes from \"the ultimate\nnon-ego,\" the \"background of matter.\" This ultimate non-ego was a heritage\nto Kant from British idealism. He took it for granted at his first step\nand held by it unchanged when he was old and exhausted. He called it the\n\"noumenon,\" the \"real correlate of matter,\" and pluralized it as \"things\nin themselves.\" But he insisted, as firmly as Herbert Spencer has since\ndone, that the \"noumenon\" is \"unknown and unknowable.\"\n\nIn a certain way--vital enough, too--\"things in themselves\" _are_ \"unknown\nand unknowable.\" Man is a small, dependent, limited being. Let us admit at\nonce every old proverb in the world, to the effect that \"the finite cannot\ncomprehend the infinite.\" Sir William Hamilton issued a tedious list of\nsuch proverbs. Let us adopt the whole of it. \"The finite cannot comprehend\nthe infinite.\" The very meaning of \"things in themselves\" is that they are\nwithheld from us in their _specific contents_. But in their _general\nnature_ they are related and revealed to us; and the revelation is always\nasserted when we name them \"source of impact,\" the \"real correlate of\nmatter,\" \"things in themselves,\" or even \"the unknown and unknowable.\" Is\nthere an \"unknown and unknowable?\" Yes, there _is_. But whatever _is_ has\n_being_--_must_ have being, or not be that which \"is.\" So much then we\n_know_ of \"the unknown and unknowable\"; it has being; it is a _fact_. But\nwe know it negatively, as well as positively. We know what it is _not_, on\nprecisely the same ground that we know what it _is_. Being a \"noumenon,\"\nit is _not_ a phenomenon; being a \"thing in _itself_,\" it is not what\nthings are to _us_. Being \"the real correlate of matter,\" it is _not_\nmatter, but is the objective background of matter.\n\nBut _now_: Kant had analyzed matter and found it to be a _relation_--a\nrelation between finite subjective awareness and this very noumenal\nbackground now in evidence. He had found, too, that all _matter_--every\nspicule of it--is _exhausted in the relation_. He had found that, out of\nthe relation, _matter has no existence_. By these presents, then, we know\nthat the objective background of matter, the ultimate non-ego, is _not\nmaterial_.\n\nAnd, at this point, where are we, if we pause and think? When reduced to\nelements, to principles, what is there of the universe--the all of things?\nJust the subjective and the objective, mind and matter. Hence, that which\nis _not matter_ is _mind_. Nothing else is left for it.\n\nWe may wriggle at this terminus as much as we like, but there is no\ndodging it. It may be said, for instance, that, while we _know_ and\n_experience_ nothing but mind and matter (including with matter its\nphenomenal vistas, space and time), we can _imagine something_ else than\neither; and, during the past fifty years, this nonsense has found lodgment\nin some heads. Now I can imagine _anything_, in the meaning that I can\narbitrarily produce some foolish _fancy_. I can imagine a white blackbird,\nwith his tail-feathers on his head. But I cannot imagine even this\nself-evident contradiction as a thing of neither mind nor matter. What is\nan object of \"imagination\" in the meaning of fancy? It may be empty of\nmatter, and so unlike the white blackbird. But _no_ object of imagination\ncan be empty of mind. Imagination is itself an act of mind; hence every\npossible product of imagination must partake of mind. If, therefore, I\nimagine something apart from mind and matter, it must still spring from\nmind, contain mind, and so _not_ be apart from mind. The \"_reductio ad\nabsurdum_\" can be had cheap and sure, just where it is most needed.\n\nAfter Immanuel Kant had once and for good dissected the universe, it seems\na pity that he declined to put his findings together, and take the last\nlogical step of his magnificent demonstrations. As a requisite, perhaps,\nto his microscopic analysis of human subjectivity, he declined to\ngeneralize his own discoveries. In short, Kant's synthesis was Hegel. But\nHegel we need not follow, as our short cut to him, through the solution of\nnoumena, is worth more, as yet, than the whole German tour of\n\"post-Kantean philosophy.\"\n\nVery early in his work Kant said:\n\n\"There are two sources of human knowledge (which probably spring from _a\ncommon, but to us unknown root_), namely, sense and understanding. By the\nformer, objects are _given_ to us; by the latter, _thought_.\"\n\nDissecting, with Kant, the nature of \"understanding,\" we have discovered\nin it the unal form of all our re-presentations--of every perceptible and\nconceivable objected fact. Dissecting \"sense,\" with the same instructor,\nwe have found it to be certain modes of mental susceptibility, its\nphysical organs being nothing but relations between susceptible awareness\nand the noumenal unknown, like all the rest of \"matter.\" Led, once more,\nby our Professor straight up to this noumenal unknown, where _he_ willed\nto stop and turn his back on it, we have only had to _look_, in order to\nsee it collapse into the self-retention of Spirit--spirit _out_ of _us_,\nbut still _in itself_, and thus going to make up the totality of Spiritual\nBeing. We have thus found the \"one common root\" of all knowledge and all\nthings. But we have touched, also, the apex of thought, and can now see\nwhat is meant--really and fully meant--by \"_absolute idealism_.\"\n\nAbsolute Idealism is not merely a phrase; it is a grand and glorious fact.\nImmersed in matter, stuck in our senses, we may insist on looking at\nsensuous phenomena as our friend John Jasper looked at the sun, with\nhonest contempt for Copernicus and Newton. \"De earf do _not_ move roun' de\nsun,\" exclaimed the sturdy preacher, \"but de bressed sun move roun' de\nearf. Dere she go now: don't I see her wi' dese very eyes?\" Parson Jasper\ndid see the sun moving round the earth, and in the same way we all see the\nobjects of our senses existing in perfect independence of ourselves.\nStill, as surely as astronomy has proved the delusion of taking the sun's\nmovement from the eye, philosophy, with the aid of \"practical science,\"\nhas proved the delusion of taking objective re-presentations as not\nconstructed through subjective being. The inevitable end of this proof is\nthe dissolution of noumena as anything \"material,\" and the inclusion of\nall things in Universal Spirit. Of such spirit, finite subjectivity is a\nfunction--a necessary participative reflex, through which the Universal\nSpirit is life, manifestation, self-evolution.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVII.\n\nSOME SEQUENCES OF ABSOLUTE IDEALISM.\n\n\nSince Kant, we have said, \"no philosophy, no rational theology, no\nultimate science, not referring to the results of his work, has had any\nreal basis in thought.\" It must be added that since the fulfilment of\nKant's _Critique_, especially by Hegel, there has not been one stone left\nas a foundation for \"materialism.\" It goes right on, however, in\nmultifarious forms, its defunct exponents still imagining they live.\nSurgical psychology, in special, is still as active with scalpel and\nmicroscope as if ours were the day of Coudillac and Erasmus Darwin. The\nknife goes into the brain, and the eye peers after it, with the funny\nexpectation of seeing, with Dr. Cabanis, some spicule or plexus of matter,\nthere, \"which secretes thought as the liver secretes bile.\" The work is\nexcellent as anatomy, and may have a plenty of important uses. But we,\nhere, if we have had the capacity and patience to grasp the findings of\nImmanuel Kant, know that mind can never be derived from any physical\ncorrespondence of its nature and action. We know that every possible\nattempt at such derivation is merely a side-show of Parson Jasper's great\nastronomical comedy, which Copernicus exploded four hundred years ago. We\nknow that every fiber, every solid or liquid, of the brain, with every\nmovement of every atom it contains, is a ready-made physical object in a\nready-made space and a ready-made time. But if we know Kant, we know,\nwithout a misgiving, that space and time, with all things in them, are not\nonly dependencies but are literal creations and manufactures of a\nuniversal principle named _mind_. We know it is this principle which\nfurnishes the form, the unity, and so the very existence of every\nphenomenon. Hence we know, finally, that the first step in the\nunderstanding of matter is the analysis of mind, through which all matter\n_is_ and is _constructed_. Without this first step, all other steps are\nsimply a stumble in the dark--the blind-man's buff of children. Or we may\nsay, with a little more dignity, perhaps, that every material law of the\ncosmos is subject to \"The Law of Scientific Idealism.\"\n\nNow scientific idealism, pursued to the end, merges in absolute idealism.\nThe source and substance of the universe is Intelligent Spirit; or, as the\nBible and its Theologians say, this is the All-In-All.\n\nFor fifty years--from the publication of Kant's _Critique_ in 1781, along\nthrough Fichte, and Schelling, to the death of Hegel in 1831--the vast\nillumination of thought that has been summed up as \"German\nTranscendentalism\" strove to unify natural theology and practical science\nin \"Absolute Idealism.\" It will yet be seen that the work was done,\nhowever ill-comprehended. The good old Kant still had his whole head with\nhim when he said, in 1787, \"the danger, in this case, is not that of being\nrefuted, but of being misunderstood.\" The Comtes, the Hamiltons, the Mills\nand Spencers--with no end, too, of their German brothers--are illustrious\nexamples in proof of Kant's remark, however greatly they may be respected\nwithin the limits of their own work.\n\nOnce and for good, the history of philosophy, when understood, and the\nhistory of science, when understood, have joined in the proof that the\nprinciple of all life--we may say God if we like--is Spirit Principle.\n\nTranscendentalism--a bulky word, but covering much more than the letter of\nit--was naturally too high and too deep a result to get all at once into\nthe average human head. For thirty-odd years after the close of its epoch\nin Germany--or until, in 1864, Dr. James Hutchison Stirling produced his\n_Secret of Hegel_--not a man stood on the earth adequate to reproduce\ntranscendentalism in basis and system. But the practical gist of it,\nwithout the full center or circumference, gradually became a part of the\nworld's literature. In Britain, most notably through Thomas Carlyle, the\nnew light penetrated biography, history, criticism, and even political\ndisquisition. In America, focused in Ralph Waldo Emerson, the same light,\nwhiter and purer if less flaming and burning, both vivified and purified\nall things on which it was shed. There the Infinite Oversoul and the\nfinite undersoul seemed once again to meet in communion and evolution.\nMeanwhile, Theodore Parker, with his vast scholarship and overpowering\ncourage, preached Jesus of Nazareth, the Sermon on the Mount, and the\nGolden Rule, with little regard for any organized theology of his day,\nwhether its Unitarianism or its Calvinistic Orthodoxy. Back of all this,\nas now appears, there was a plain, uncultured, but inquiring and\nthoughtful man, in the byways of New England, who from the mechanism of\nclocks turned to the workings of the human mind, and in his own way\nreached the depth of knowledge and the mysteries of life. From a few\npractical experiments, he, too, analyzed the things of matter, and found\nthem to be re-presentations, externalizations, of elemental spirit. And\nthen he drew the inference that spirit molds, directs, governs matter, and\nso that health of mind materializes health of body.\n\nBut now, at once, the whole question at issue confronts us--what is the\ntrue and full position and power _of mind in therapeutics_? This question\nmust be answered, here, not from the Quimby standpoint, and much less from\nthat of the shallow muddle termed Christian Science, but from the\nstandpoint of actual, accredited, established metaphysics, now\nsubstantially bearing the concensus of religion, philosophy, and the\npractical investigation of material phenomena.\n\nBy aid of Kant, with our short-cut to the logical and necessary end of his\nachievement, we have grasped the elemental source and solvent of man and\nhis universe. It is Spirit in its evolution. But, in this evolution,\nman--or say rather and always _the principle of sensation and\nconsciousness in which man inheres_--is merely the general form, diversely\nindividualized, of the One All-Inclusive Spirit in the activity of\nself-manifestation. The earth, the sun, moon, and stars, the human body,\nits house and the landscape, with every particle of all of them, are\noutwoven of universal Spirit through the loom of subjective being and\nunity. The forms of matter, with no exception, are fabricated in this way.\nThus, not figuratively, but literally and with exact knowledge, we may\nrepeat after St. John:\n\n\"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word\nwas God. All things were made by him; and without him was not anything\nmade that was made.\"\n\nBut the principle of animal apprehension and human apperception--or say\njust the conscious and the sub-conscious--is not the Ultimately Creative\nOne, but is, in _us_, only a sub-creative power and agency. We simply\nindividualize it in endless degrees and variations, all of us framing the\nsame general world of objects, conceptions and feelings, but no one of us\nbeing, seeing, or feeling, in all respects, exactly like any other\nincarnation of our common identity.\n\nBut while the _form_--the unity, and thus the individuality--of all\nthings, is materialized from Spirit through sensation and consciousness in\nsubjectivity--while this is the secret and genesis of all creation--we\nmust ever hold fast to the equally basic and universal fact that the\n_filling_ of the form--the infinite variety of impact on subjectivity\nwhich furnishes the diversity of objects--all this comes from that\nultimate spirit-background crudely called \"the unknown and unknowable.\"\n\nNow this background of Absolute Spirit, the very withholding of which from\nfinite creatures constitutes them such, institutes their law of progress,\nand gives movement of expression to the Infinite Itself, can only be\nabsorbed and mastered by human beings through study, work, and\nexperience. While genuine metaphysics, then, assures us of our\nspirit-origin and relative oneness with God--of being God's children far\nmore directly and intimately than most of us have ever imagined--it\nteaches us that for practical purposes, in our condition of existence\ncalled \"matter,\" it makes no difference _what_ we _call_ this condition.\n'Tis something actual, something definite, something _fixed_, just as long\nas we are in our earthly relation to it. From this point of view, Dr.\nJohnson's kicking of the stone to refute Berkeley was a deserved kick, and\neven Byron's fun was justified in his tipsy lines,\n\n  \"When Bishop Berkeley said there was no matter,\n  And proved it, 'twas no matter what he said.\"\n\nAll things are spirit surely enough; but the phenomena of matter, as\ntransformed spirit, are related to each other under the laws of what we\nnecessarily designate as material nature. Little by little, through long\nand hard exertion, we find out what these relations are, and how they are\nfitted to the human center of them. Some things are good to eat and to\nnourish us; others to poison and kill us. A cold or fever may be a\nmanifestation of spirit, and an herb or drug may be another; but if the\nherb or drug counteracts and destroys the cold or the fever, and\nexperience proves it ten thousand times, who cares to analyze a dose of\naconite or a cup of saffron-tea into a draft of \"mortal\" or \"immortal\"\nmind? The process is a mere fooling with ideals--hysterics jumping at the\nmoon. _On metaphysical grounds_--as far as anybody knows what metaphysics\nreally means--there is no need that our physicians, if they are \"good\nphysicians,\" should trouble themselves much about a Mrs. Mary Baker G.\nEddy. Esculapius came into the world long before her, and his followers\nwill stay in it long after her materialized divinity has risen into a more\nspiritual and a more intelligent state.\n\nThe same may be said of our theologians. Their creeds have not come out of\nnothing, however much the spirit of them may have grown thick and muddy\nthrough crude understandings. The Christian Church, surely, can yet offer\nto mankind something better than the Eddy \"Church Scientist\"; and if it\ncan, it is in no ultimate jeopardy from a few, or a few hundred,\ncongregations of half-educated faddists.\n\nFor a student of history--not in its moments, but in its decades and\ncenturies--it is easy to see that \"Christian Science\" has the reason of\nthe fact and _the spread of it_, in its being a protest against the\ndepressing materialism around it--a materialism which, though rationally\ndecapitated by Kant, has shown marvelous activity, for a corpse, ever\nsince the execution.\n\nThe medical profession, too, has partly, if indirectly, been responsible\nfor Mrs. Eddy's crazy horse of \"metaphysics,\" running away in the dark,\nand butting its own brains out. From Dr. Mesmer to Dr. Charcot, it took\nabout a hundred and twenty years for \"animal magnetism,\" under the softer\nnames of \"hypnotism\" and \"suggestion,\" to achieve full and final standing\nin the French Academy of Medicine; and the mental phenomena attending\n\"mesmerism\" have still but little \"respectability\" among \"regular\nphysicians.\" But, that curative agencies are not confined to drugs has\nlong been settled in the public mind--such part of the public mind, at\nleast, as permits itself any considerable reading and thinking.\n\nHas the pulpit itself--orthodox and not so orthodox--contributed to the\nsuccess of Eddy \"Science\"? We must say it has. The practise, among the\nsects, of twisting the Bible out of its straight, historical, natural\nsignificance, and fitting its texts to every sort of whim, folly, and\nmalefaction--this general practise has at last culminated in Mrs. Eddy's\n_Key to the Scriptures_, with pretty nearly the dissolution of them in the\nabomination of interpretation.\n\nBut \"Christian Science\"--the Eddy misfit for a specious name--has had its\nrise, and it has probably risen about as high as it can reach,\nnotwithstanding its rapid extension for the moment. Only its protrusion\nfrom insignificance and non-attention was needed to uncover its foundation\non the sands of ignorance, its strength in the perennial weakness and\ncredulity of mankind, and its business success in ordinary, or more than\nordinary, business cupidity. Has it done no good in the world, then? Ah,\nthat is another question. Whatever may have been the chief motive of its\nfounder, and whatever may have been its \"comedy of errors,\" it has forced\nthe inception of a movement that, as a whole, may have vast results for\nthe human mind and the human body. Whatever material medicines may be\nnecessary to mankind while they themselves are in a material condition,\npsychic forces in the cure of disease can no longer be ignored. What is\nthe extent, and what the limit, of these forces, is a problem that must be\nexamined. As conditionally--here and now--man is _both spiritual and\ncorporeal_--it would seem to be a self-evident conclusion that he must\nhave both material and spiritual aids to health. That we can \"jump\" our\ncondition, before we get out of it, is the most tremendous paradox ever\npresented to the human mind; but the sequences--even physical--of\nsystematically opening the finite soul to the Infinite Spirit may be\nincalculable. The revival, or definite rediscovery, in modern times, of\nhealing the sick by the soul and the laying-on of hands, came to pass some\nfifty years ago, in the United States, through the honest, single-minded,\nPhineas Parkhurst Quimby. If the spirit of evil--of hypocrisy, selfishness\nand avarice--has entered into the movement of mental healing through\nanother source, the frequent necessity of very human means to divine ends\nis once more illustrated.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVIII.\n\nVARIOUS SCHOOLS OF THE NEW THOUGHT.\n\n\nJust now, the general cause of metaphysical therapeutics is separating\nrapidly into various \"schools,\" few of them having much consideration for\nthe pretentious health-trust, \"Christian Science.\"\n\nIn the South, for instance--at Sea Breeze, Florida--a Mrs. Helen Wilmans\nhas founded a settlement of houses and lands, souls and bodies, with\nbooks, pamphlets, and a weekly press, all devoted, mentally, morally and\nphysically, to psychic dominion over all things. _Freedom_ is the name of\nthe organ that specially spreads Mrs. Wilmans' light and curatives. She\nhas capacity in a comparative degree, and energy, with self-confidence, in\nthe superlative. She proclaims this:\n\n\"Intellectual power in the individual comes from concentration of the mind\nupon an idea until the truth or falsity of the idea becomes apparent.\nLikewise the power of the race in the unfoldment of a race problem must\ncome from a concentrated effort to discover a hitherto unfolded racial\ncapacity; and this is the meaning of the movement I am inaugurating here.\"\n\nThe Wilmans' conception of mind-healing has been illustrated as follows by\na correspondent of _Freedom_, who discusses and admits the curing of\ndisease among devout Catholics, exalted and prayerful, at the shrine of\nSt. Anne in Illinois. It is all natural, he says:\n\n\"If with equally strong belief they should pray to God, Buddha, St. Peter\nor Paul, Mrs. Eddy or Mrs. Wilmans, or a stump or stone--or should they\nstand on their heads, or drink water from a certain river, or anoint the\nsick parts with clay and spittle--the result would be the same. Their mind\nwould cure their bodies. Mind is king.\"\n\nIn some respects, the paper, _Freedom_, is almost as free from \"material\nsense\" as the book, _Science and Health_. Mrs. Wilmans has a correspondent\nwho asserts, and probably believes, that, by the concentrated power of her\nfinite female mind, she has \"never failed once in five years to avert the\nfury of severe summer storms.\" She has \"demonstrated,\" she says, the\ndominion of mind over material nature, \"as clearly as any Mental Scientist\nhas demonstrated it over disease.\"\n\nAnd here is an official announcement from Mrs. Wilmans' organ:\n\n\"_Freedom_ is the only paper published whose leading and constantly avowed\nobject is to overcome death right here in this world and right now. If you\nwant to learn something of the newly-discovered power vested in man which\nfits him for this stupendous conquest, read this paper, and keep on\nreading it.\"\n\n\"The new thought\" has traveled West as far as South. It recently had among\nits organs _The Temple_, of Denver, Colorado, \"a monthly magazine devoted\nto the fuller unfoldment of the divinity of humanity,\" the editor of which\nwas Mr. Paul Tyner, who afterwards conducted the _Arena_ of Boston,\nconsolidated with _The Journal of Practical Metaphysics_. The purpose of\nthe latter periodical was \"the unification of scientific and spiritual\nthought and the new philosophy of health.\" The editor was Horatio W.\nDresser, a Harvard graduate, an excellent philosopher of the ontological\ntrend, and a polished writer, reminding one partly of Spinoza and partly\nof Emerson. Mr. Dresser's books, _The Power of Silence_, _The Perfect\nWhole_, and others, have given him a wide reputation in his particular\nfield of work, and have constituted him a center of the most logical and\nscholarly literature connected with \"metaphysical healing.\" This\nliterature, too extensive for specialized designation, is under the\npropagandism of the Boston \"Metaphysical Club,\" an active and growing\norganization.\n\nThe Boston \"Metaphysical Club\" comprises too much exact information and\nsolid learning to accept or countenance the extreme vagaries of \"Christian\nScience,\" and appears to be acting as a balance-wheel to the whole\nmovement of \"the new thought.\" In a recent leaflet the Club has taken\nspecial occasion to dissect and repudiate that most preposterous doctrine\nof Mrs. Eddy's \"science,\" the absolute nothingness of matter.\n\nThe title of the leaflet referred to is _Christian Science and the New\nMetaphysical Movement_, with the added phrase, _An Intelligent\nDiscrimination Desirable_. One excerpt is this:\n\n\"Christian Science proclaims the unreality of matter, and of the body. The\nrational and broader thought, not only admits the validity of the body, as\nveritable expression, but claims that it is as good, in its own place and\nplane, as is the soul and spirit. While susceptible to mental molding, it\nis neither an error nor an illusion. Moreover, it is friendly to its\nwelfare to affirm both its validity and goodness. It is to be ruled,\nbeautified, and utilized in its own order, and not denied an existence.\nEven admitting that the whole cosmos is, in the last analysis, but one\nUniversal Mind and its manifestation; even admitting that all matter is\nbut a lower vibration of spirit, and that the human body is essentially a\nmental rather than a physical organism; still, matter has its own relative\nreality and validity, and is not to be ignored as illusion.\"\n\nOf its kind, nothing better than this could be said even by a Hegel. It is\nexactly the correct statement of the great metaphysical truth.\n\nThe leaflet agrees with the criticism of this volume, that \"the spirit of\nChristian Science is autocratic rather than democratic,\" and says:\n\n\"Its polity and ritual, in every detail, are shaped and directed\narbitrarily by a single will. There is no room for investigation, liberty\nof thought, progress, or further revelation. There is no recognition of\nrelated physical science or evolutionary progress.\"\n\nThe monograph continues thus:\n\n\"The liberal movement stands for freedom of soul, and is in no way opposed\nto subordinate orders of truth.... It does not ignore the good in existing\nsystems, disparage reasonable hygiene, or deny the place of certain\ndepartments of surgery. It is not insensible to the present and\nprovisional uses of simple external therapeutic agencies, at least until\nindividual unfoldment and the recognition of higher law become more\ngeneral.... While understanding, both from experience and observation,\nthat a systematic employment of mental potency in a rational, scientific,\nand idealistic manner has a wonderful and unappreciated healing energy,\nits exponents do not think it necessary to form a new and exclusive\nreligious sect.\"\n\nThe main premise, of course, of all the schools of \"mind-healing\" is that\n\"the mind can and should control the body.\" Let us go straight from this\npremise to the manner of applying it, as explained, for instance, in a\nlittle book entitled _The New Philosophy of Health_, excellently well\nwritten, by a Miss Harriet B. Bradbury.\n\n\"The healer [says this author] simply holds in mind with great tenacity,\nfor perhaps ten or fifteen minutes, an image of the patient as he should\nbe. This image, by the process known as 'thought transference' is\nimpressed upon the sick man's mind as a possibility, when his own strong\ndesire, seizing it, is able to reproduce it as an actuality. He may be\nquite unconscious that he has done anything for himself, and when he finds\nhimself well, gives all the credit to the man who, as he thinks, has\n'healed' him. Yet the change is wrought by no man, but by the great\nlife-giving force which two wills working in harmony have called into\nperfect action.\"\n\nIn confirmation of \"the law of mental causation,\" Miss Bradbury says:\n\n\"The most significant of recent biological experiments are those which\nhave been conducted at the Smithsonian Institute with a view to\ndiscovering the physical effects of different mental states. They have\nproved that the different emotions produce immediate chemical changes\nwithin the physical organism, and it only remains to continue the\ninvestigation to learn just how each habitual emotion is finally reflected\nupon the outward frame.\"\n\nSo that \"old mesmerist,\" Dr. Quimby--for this was exactly his view--has\ngot along as far as the Smithsonian Institute at Washington. And here let\nus introduce the names and cogitations of a few authorities so \"eminently\nrespectable\" that the \"very best and most conservative people\" need not\nshrink from becoming acquainted with them.\n\nIn a work on _Practical Idealism_, William DeWitt Hyde, President of\nBowdoin College, tells us:\n\n\"There are certain classes of disease for which hypnotic treatment is\nhighly beneficial. Mental healing in all its various forms, in so far as\nit is valuable, rests on the principle that body and mind are very closely\ninter-related through the partly conscious but chiefly unconscious control\nof the vital functions through the nervous system; and that the state of\nthe mind at any given time, and consequently the state of the body, in so\nfar as we know it at that time, is made up of a relatively small\npresentation of sensation, and a very large contribution of associations.\nHence a very slight suggestion through the senses, by speech, or physical\ncontact, or eradication of fixed images, anxieties, and fears, may\nintroduce a new nucleus around which an entirely new set of associations\nwill cluster; so that through the renewing of the mind the body may come\nto be transformed.\"\n\nCharles Van Norden, D.D., LL.D., at one time President of Elmira College,\ntells us in his outline of psychology, _The Psychic Factor_, that\n\n\"So tremendous is this power of mind over body, that disease may often be\ncured and ailments caused by a new idea.\"\n\n\"A woman [says Rev. Dr. Van Orden] once came to Surgeon-General Hammond\nwith what he considered an incurable disorder. She sighed as she turned to\ngo away disconsolate, saying, 'Ah, if I but had some of the water of\nLourdes!'--for she was a devout Catholic. Now it so happened that a friend\nhad brought the doctor a bottle of the genuine water of Lourdes to\nexperiment with. He informed the patient of this, and promised her some\nprovided she would first try a more potent remedy, Aqua Crotonis (New York\nCity aqueduct water). The woman consented, but protesting that this latter\ncould not reach the case. He then gave her a little vial of the real\narticle, but labeled 'Aqua Crotonis.' When this had failed he gave her\nCroton water, but labeled 'Water of Lourdes.' The result was a complete\ncure.\"\n\nProf. William James, of Harvard, in the chapter of his _Principles of\nPsychology_ treating \"the production of movement,\" quotes many authorities\nand gives various diagrams illustrating the effects of sensations and\nemotions upon the pulse, the respiration, the glands, muscles, and other\norgans and functions of men and animals. The celebrated Prof. Bain is\nquoted as saying that \"according as an impression is accompanied with\n_feeling_, the aroused currents diffuse themselves over the brain, leading\nto a general agitation of the moving organs, as well as affecting the\nviscera.\" The conclusion of Prof. James is that\n\n\"Using sweeping terms and ignoring exceptions, we might say that every\npossible feeling produces a movement, and that every movement is a\nmovement of the entire organism, and of each and all its parts.\"\n\n\"The effect,\" says Prof. James, \"of fear, shame and anger, upon the\nblood-supply of the skin, especially the skin of the face, are too well\nknown to need remark. Sensations of the higher senses produce, according\nto Couty and Charpentier, the most varied effects upon the pulse-rate and\nblood-pressure of dogs.\"\n\nNow if the higher emotions of dogs produce marked effects upon their\nphysical structure, we must naturally infer that hope, faith, joy--all,\nindeed, of the loftier emotions of human beings--may set up high and\nhealthful movements in the human body, while base emotions set up low,\nharmful, and diseased conditions. In this claim, anyhow, we have,\naccording to \"metaphysical healing,\" the cause and cure of disease,\ncapped, too, with the ethics of \"the new thought.\"\n\nThomas Jay Hudson, in his book, _The Law of Psychic Phenomena_, gives this\ncompend of the facts:\n\n\"The science of psycho-therapeutics is yet in its infancy. Thus far just\nenough has been learned to stimulate research. It has been demonstrated\nthat there is a psychic power inherent in man which can be employed for\nthe amelioration of his own physical condition, as well as that of his\nfellows. When this is said, nearly all the ground covered by present\nknowledge has been embraced. It is true that many wonderful cures have\nbeen effected, many marvelous phenomena developed. Nevertheless, all are\ngroping in the dark, with only an occasional glimmering of distant light\nshed upon the subject; and this light serves principally to show how\nlittle is now known, compared with what there is yet to learn.\"\n\nIn discussing the conditions necessary to psychic healing, Mr. Hudson\naffirms that the exemplar and healer of Nazareth, the founder of our\nChristian religion, always recognized these conditions in the \"miracles\"\nimputed to him. We shall end our quotations, at this point, with one from\nMr. Hudson's chapter on \"The Physical Manifestations and Philosophy of\nChrist.\"\n\n\"I do not mean to say that Jesus could not heal in such cases where the\nmental environment was unfavorable; but the fact that he took infinite\npains, wherever practicable, to secure the best conditions, shows that he\nunderstood the law and worked within its limitations. Certain it is that\nhe never performed any of his wonderful works outside the laws which he\nproclaimed, nor did he ever intimate that he could do so. It is true that\nhis biographers do not always relate the details of the transactions\nrecorded; but it must be remembered that they wrote at a later day, and\nmay not have been in possession of all the details. It is, however, a\nmarvelous fact, and is one which constitutes indubitable evidence of the\ntruth of his history, that in no instance do they relate a single act\nperformed or word spoken by him, relating to the healing of the sick,\nwhich does not reveal his perfect knowledge of and compliance with the\nlaws which pertain to mental therapeutics as they are revealed in modern\ntimes through experiment and the processes of inductive reasoning.\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIX.\n\nAN ADVANCED HEALER OF TO-DAY.\n\n\nRecapitulating what we have been over, it appears that \"metaphysical\nhealing\" is simply the suggestion and determination of health--the ideal\nphotograph, as it were, of health--transferred from the well to the ill,\nin the conviction that Universal Spirit is the principle of all health,\nwhich we may receive from its Source by opening ourselves to it. That is\nto say, the health of the Infinite Spirit, so far as absorbed by a finite\nspirit, corrects finite errors of mind, and the mind, thus corrected,\ncorrects, or cures, the body. Such, certainly, was the \"truth-cure\" of\nPhineas P. Quimby. With him, starting as a mesmerist, it was, really, a\nkind of normal and sacred hypnotism, by which he endeavored to put his\npatients under the close, immediate influence and operation of Supreme\nLife, and Sympathy, and Vigor.\n\nSuch treatment should do much for the ailing--how much we must wait to\nknow.\n\nBut the effects of it must have limits, and these limits must be the\ngeneral, the fixed conditions, of what we designate as mind and matter. It\nmay be well to re-state these conditions, but with focal reference to this\npoint--the one vital point of our whole theme.\n\nMetaphysically speaking, we are spirit, and all else is spirit. But what\n_is_ spirit? What are the constituents of it, to the extent that man may\ngrasp them?\n\nFirst, is the universal principle of intelligent conjunctive unity,\ninstinctive and conscious, which, individualized in men and animals,\nmanufactures, or sub-creates, all the unities of their environment, which\nthey take to be \"the forms of matter.\"\n\nSecond, is the equally universal principle of subjective (negative)\nsensibility--the receptiveness of spirit in its forms called \"the senses.\"\nTransmuted through these senses, ultimate objective spirit--to us \"the\nunknown and unknowable\"--furnishes the filling, or contents, of what\nconsciousness and sub-consciousness make up, or unify, into objects.\n\nThird, is the vast fact of Spirit-background--Infinite Spirit \"in\nitself\"--which is revealed, and can only be revealed, _to the finite_, as\ntransformed through fixed modes of finite receptivity.\n\nA man, therefore, is simply an individualization of the process by which\nthe Absolute--That Which Is--expresses itself and lives. Whatever may be\nour environment under some changed state of our receptivity--say \"the\nfuture life\"--our environment of spirit objected through sense, in space\nand time, is the environment of _matter_; and the human body is a part of\nit. We are not only \"in matter,\" therefore, but we sub-create the matter,\nthrough our God-given modes of sensuous receptivity, and can only escape\nfrom it through an entire change of those modes, called \"senses.\" The door\nof escape is the door of death, and no human being has ever avoided it.\n_Can_ any human being avoid it? We say _no_: because to be out of matter\nis to be out of the kind of receptiveness--our five senses--through which\nmatter itself exists. If there be exceptional persons of clairvoyant\nsusceptibility, who can pass sufficiently out of our average material\ncondition to realize aught beyond them, the _bodily_ state of these\npersons, too, must end, as we all end.\n\nLet us not mix conditions, like the metaphysical tyros of Christian\nScience; but while we are in the state of spirit known and experienced as\nmind _and_ matter, let us acknowledge the plain fact. As a corollary of\nthis fact, if we are out of health, let us look to remedies good for _both\nmind and matter_--the body and the soul. Such will probably be the\nultimate equipoise between \"mental medicine\" and material curatives.\n\nThis, at any rate, is the best conclusion for \"the new thought\" that the\nscribe at hand can reach. He may be wrong; for he is totally \"uninspired,\"\nand has nothing to follow but his nose and his \"mortal mind.\" But, the\nconclusion once reached, he stood on it as an _a-priori_ breathing-spot.\nAnd then it occurred to him that, peradventure, some radical, independent\nson of Galen might be conducting the business of therapeutics on a\npsycho-corporeal, double platform. If so, Boston would be the place to\nlook for him, and the search was begun. In due time it was successful. The\nresult may at least prove suggestive and entertaining.\n\nLet our new friend be called Prof. P.; for he has been an instructor in\nhis kind of work, and he bears the title of \"doctor\" only by the courtesy\nof his patients, as Dr. Quimby did.\n\nNow it is certain that if Prof. P. does not cure all sorts of diseases,\nhis patients think he does, vouch for it when questioned, and give most\nsincere testimonials to that effect. Even the cure of cancer is vigorously\naffirmed, and in connection with cases that have been given up by eminent\nphysicians. But, as this book is doing no medical advertising, one\nordinary instance of Prof. P.'s work must suffice.\n\nA large, strong woman, as the consequence of a fall, incurred violent\nsciatic rheumatism, and was treated at a hospital for three months, being\nworse at the end of that time than at first. On personally interviewing\nher--and she is a woman of more than average intelligence--she informed\nthe writer that, in one treatment of twenty minutes, Prof. P. had\n\"entirely cured\" her, and that after five months--which had elapsed at the\ntime of the conversation--there had been no recurrence of her trouble.\n\nOur search for light has led to a somewhat close acquaintance with Prof.\nP. and has induced him to explain his theory and practise of healing, for\nour use as a writer, excepting a few of his personal discoveries not\nimmediately important to the public, which he must withhold, he says, for\nsomething like the same reason that his learned brothers, the physicians,\nwrite their prescriptions in Latin.\n\nProf. P. requires it to be said explicitly that he is a Spiritualist. He\nis so pronounced in the faith that he impatiently scoffs at all denial,\nevasion or concealment, of what he deems his \"positive knowledge\" that we\nexist after \"our mere change of condition called death,\" and that \"the\nspirits of our departed friends are interested in our earthly welfare.\" He\ndeclares, however, that Dr. Quimby was sensible in not trusting spirit\ncommunications at the expense of his own judgment--\"as, taking the long\ngenerations of mankind, there are necessarily more fools disembodied than\nin the flesh.\"\n\nAccording to our friend P., there are now four great remedial agencies\npossible to healing the sick, apart from medicines in the usual sense. The\nintelligent and careful use of such medicines he believes in, and he seeks\nto cooperate with all broad-minded physicians, rather than to antagonize\nthem. The more occult, but often more effective agencies, than drugs or\nherbs, he says, are these:\n\n_First_: Animal Magnetism.\n\n_Second_: Natural Healing-Power--this power being inherent to some extent\nin all human beings, but greatly concentrated and developed in certain\nindividuals.\n\n_Third_: Mental or Psychic Force--a force existing in both embodied and\ndisembodied spirits, and as a universal principle.\n\n_Fourth_: \"Sensitized\" devices containing these powers and elements, with\nthe function of imparting them to the ailing and the weary.\n\n\"Magnetism,\" says our Professor, \"as a material phenomenon, is a force so\npotent that it rearranges the unsystematized molecules of certain metals,\nand gives them harmonious direction and integral traction. The application\nof it--termed polarization--has been known even to produce 'clicks' within\nmetallic bodies, loud enough to be distinctly heard. Animal magnetism,\npertaining to organized beings, acts upon their corresponding but higher\nmolecules in the same general way. The sick are disordered, locally\nclogged, 'out of tune.' They have lost, as it were, their polarity. Animal\nmagnetism restores it to them. It then goes further and vitalizes them;\nfor, if imparted to the feeble by a person strong, well, and stored full\nof it, an equilibrium takes place between an operator and his patient.\nAnimal magnetism, however unconsciously utilized, doubtless takes part in\nall so-called 'mind-cures' that are _physical_ afflictions, not the\nresults of bugaboos and whimsies. The absurd fulminations of Mrs. Eddy, at\nthis late day, against animal magnetism, are only equaled by the\ncomprehensive ignorance, in general, which Bishop Brooks is said to have\nconsidered the only possible excuse for the production of a book like\n_Science and Health_.\n\n\"Inherent Healing Power is more occult than animal magnetism, but has\nbecome almost as well established. According to the accepted evidence of\ncenturies, this power was fully exemplified in ancient times by the most\nfaithful and unselfish of all the sons of God and man, Jesus, our Christ.\nAccording to recent and contemporary evidence, both widespread and exact,\nthe Protestant world of late centuries has had no example of the same\nquality so marked as that of Dr. P. P. Quimby. Inherent healing power goes\nwith close and tender sympathy for the afflicted, and grows with use, like\nthe brawn of a stevedore, or the intellectual dexterity of a practised\nwriter. It may eventuate in a Quimby as naturally as the poetic faculty\neventuates in a Kipling.\n\n\"By mental or psychic force,\" says the Professor, \"I mean the principle of\napprehending, understanding, and reasoning, with the moral elements\npertaining to conscience and will. This combination of our essential\nbeing, in whatever phase of it we may exist, affects and modifies, if it\ndoes not altogether dominate, all the rest of our make-up. Its importance\nis very great, but may be exaggerated by forgetting that man is a\nmicrocosm, and that while he is in the externalized condition of spirit\nknown as matter he is not at the same time _out_ of it. For the finite to\nput itself in harmony with the Infinite, by right thinking, right feeling,\nright conduct, is indispensable to the highest health; but an imaginary\nunion with God through fictitious conceptions of our own ego is unnatural\nand unwholesome exaltation, inducing disease of the mind, whatever it may\ndo to the body.\n\n\"Psychic power is an absolutely universal principle, common, in degree, to\nmen, spirits, and God. It is sometimes employed by hypnotists to such an\nextent that the physical sensation of a subject is rendered void, even\nunder amputation of a bodily member. It can destroy the taste for\nintoxicants in a drunkard. It can supplant melancholia with hope and\ncheerfulness. What it can _not_ do is yet a problem.\n\n\"Of course such a power is a part, and great part, of sane therapeutics.\nIn the application of it,\" said the Professor, with much warmth, \"I\naffirm--let those who have not my knowledge and experience think what\ntheir ignorance or prejudice saddles upon them--that 'departed spirits,'\nas we call them, combine their efforts with those of men and women, to\nheal the sick. The power is thus redoubled.\n\n\"We have taken but a few steps in this sort of knowledge, and it is\naccompanied by a plenty of deception and twaddle. But the truth underlying\nit has now procured a hearing even before eminently timid 'societies of\npsychical research,' and will soon conquer them, as mesmerism has done.\nCertain spirit-conditions are coming to be rationalized. In this country,\nfor instance, the spirits of Indians everywhere manifest themselves,\nespecially in connection with the cures of disease. The reason is simple.\nIndians were close to the earth, near to nature, in their lives, and they\nenjoy the scene of their old 'hunting grounds' more than such etherealized\nspirits as were slightly attached to it. But spirit-aid in therapeutics is\nmostly co-operative. Essential physicians, whether in our state of being\nor the higher state, feel an interest in their pursuit, and practise it.\nThe most intelligent guide their assistants; but robust spirits of earthly\nqualities and attractions sometimes furnish a basic healing force that is\nalmost physical.\"\n\nProf. P.'s system of healing is remarkable enough in all ways; but his\nclaims for his \"sensitized devices\" would be too astounding for credence\nwere it not that the things appear \"to work,\" just as he says they will.\nSeemingly, they are nothing but small metallic plates; but they are\ncharged, he affirms, with earth-magnetism as a \"power-house,\" and then\nwith animal magnetism, with natural human healing quality, with\nattractiveness to spirit-co-operation in that quality, and finally with\npsychic power and control--that is, direction of mind and will. In other\nwords, Prof. P. says that, after twenty years of study and experiment he\ncan transmit to his \"sensitized devices,\" and store in them, all the four\ngreat healing agencies which can be employed in therapeutics apart from\nordinary medicines.\n\nBy such means, he affirms, \"not only healing, but instantaneous healing,\"\nto the extent at least of immediate relief from pain, can always be\neffected in all cases adapted to his treatment.\n\n\"Christian Science,\" he says--\"mind-cure--faith-cure--oh yes, they\n'demonstrate' over things, as the phrase goes. I admit it, at least in\nsome instances. But, at their very best, they all _take time_. The patient\nmust wait to exalt himself into some vision or condition he is told about,\nor to accept some theological doctrine or other, whether true or false.\nSuppose a man is knotted up with rheumatism, has a fit, or is insane. I\ndon't wait for him to build up a belief, or to get into harmony with the\nHighest. I take him just as he is, clap my sensitizers on him, go to work\nmyself, and, if he is not too far gone for aid on earth, I restore an\nequilibrium of body and brain. If I do this--if I instantly drive away the\nworst kind of pain--if I retrieve lost consciousness or a disordered\nmind--I can put faith enough into my patient for a beginning. Later, I\nwill attend to his theology to the extent of my knowledge, if he desires\nmy services as a priest.\"\n\nThe operation of Prof. P.'s sensitized appliances, according to his claim\nfor them, is correction and vitalization of both mind and body, when\ndisarranged or \"ill,\" and then concentration of power in accordance with\nlocation of disease or pain. \"As strange as it may seem,\" he says, \"these\nlittle pieces of metal take upon themselves the physical and mental\nconditions of sickness, which can even be conveyed by them from one person\nto another, as I have proved by various experiments. But these conditions\ncan be discharged from the plates, or 'grounded,' like electricity, and\nthis, too, without destroying the higher, firmer, normal charge of health\nand strength.\n\n\"Do you look incredulous; do you smile with a tinge of pity?\" asked Prof.\nP., as he talked. \"Wait a minute. You have heard of Dr. Luys, one of the\nmost distinguished physicians in the world, Charcot's favorite assistant,\nand now the head of the great Charity Hospital of Paris. Not long ago he\nhad a patient--a young woman who had suffered nervous prostration, and was\nlosing her mind from melancholia. She was affectionate, and greatly\nattached to her family. But she became aware that her love was strangely\nturning to aversion, which she could not control. Frightened and ashamed,\nshe went to Dr. Luys. He tried everything he could think of to cure her,\nbut unavailingly. At his wits' end--not knowing _what_ to do--he took up,\none day, a large electro-magnet, and, as a pure experiment of impulse,\nfastened it to her head. He was suddenly called away for three-quarters of\nan hour. Returning, he found his patient weak, but her head better and\nclearer than usual. Dismissing her, he put the magnet on his own head,\ntook the chair she had sat in, and remained there as long as she had\ndone. He then went to dine with his wife and children, of whom he is very\nfond. But, greatly to his surprise, he found that, with no fault of their\nown, they were not agreeable to him. _He had taken the conditions of his\npatient._\n\n\"He was keen enough to recognize the fact, and announce it to his\nprofession and the world. He drew the conclusion that the electro-magnet\ncan absorb morbid brain-influences. Also that it can transfer such\ninfluences from the sick to the well, though two healthy persons are not\naffected by it. He added that the transference of conditions from the\nhealthy to the diseased almost always benefits them.\n\n\"I am not hanging on 'high authorities,'\" continued the Professor, \"but\nthey are sometimes useful to me. There is Dr. Julius Althaus, of Berlin, a\nmember, too, of the English Royal College of Physicians. As explained in a\nrecent issue of the _Lancet_, the chief English organ of the medical\nfraternity, Dr. Althaus is now rejuvenating old age, and prolonging our\npresent term of life, by certain galvano-electric appliances--which, by\nthe way, he does not tell quite all about. Henry Irving is understood to\nhave been held back from the infirmities of advancing years, and restored\nto the stage, by Dr. Althaus.\"\n\nProf. P. claims to have been at work half a life-time in the general\ndirection indicated by the experiments and achievements of Luys and\nAlthaus, but to have been so busy that he has had no time to think about a\ndegree of M. D. \"The world,\" he says, \"should be very grateful to these\neminent gentlemen, and _I_ certainly am grateful; for though I anticipated\nthe happenings of Dr. Luys by several years, and though almost any\n'magnetic healer' would assert the _hypothesis_, at least, of Dr. Althaus,\nmy own theories and results are so far beyond my epoch that without the\nsteps, however short, taken by such men as Luys and Althaus, I could get\nno sort of hearing. I am often laughed at, of course, as a 'crank'; but I\ngenerally laugh last--for, as the phrase goes nowadays, I 'get there.'\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XX.\n\nCONCLUSION.\n\n\nThe moral of our story is an old one, always new. \"There are more things\nin heaven and earth than\"--anybody short of Mary Baker G. Eddy can put\ninto a \"science.\" From this text it would be logical to educe a cyclopedia\nevery month or so. But one little point will do here.\n\nThe practise of medicine, notwithstanding its grand achievements, is still\nin its infancy. When I am ill, I call a doctor--the best in the vicinity.\nIt is the custom; and, as Montaigne said, _Que sais-je?_ I am not sure of\nmuch, and when I have \"_grippe_\" I am quite certain of less than ever. But\nthe materials I have lately been at work on make me wish that \"my doctor,\"\ninstead of scorning all new things, would look into some of them, and add\nthem to his acquirements. He will have no need to accept \"Christian\nScience,\" which has been accurately described as \"a way of getting cured\nof things by believing something that isn't true.\" I must excuse \"my\ndoctor\" from accepted that inverted \"science.\" But the general subject of\noccult and psychic healing is worthy of his attention. \"My doctor\" knows\nmuch: but, if he should enlarge his knowledge just a little, my faith in\nhim would stand the increment.\n\nOne thing I shall insist on. \"My doctor\" must not endeavor to supersede\nTorquemada, Henry the Eighth, and the learned ecclesiastical doctors of\nthe Inquisition. He must not interfere with the right of private judgment\nin saving the body, as they did in saving the soul. In such a case I\nshould count them his superiors, inasmuch as the soul is really worth more\nthan its external machinery, which, in a few years, more or less, must\nwear out and go to the cemetery.\n\nThe Inquisition honestly held a theory that the soul could only be saved\nby accepting a certain creed, and ought to be saved even at the cost of\nbreaking the body on a wheel. The Inquisition would have been right, if\nits creed had really been the thing supposed. But four centuries of\nProtestantism have established a different theory: it is that, whatever\nany creed may be or do, every man has the prerogative of deciding for\nhimself the manner of thinking which shall raise him to heaven or lower\nhim to sheol. Still, I repeat, the soul is worth more than the body, and\nif Protestantism applies to the greater, it should apply to the less.\n\nSome things have been settled, I suppose, by long experience, and have\nbecome matters of law for the protection of nations. Civilization requires\nthat a man who knows nothing of physiology shall not practise surgery;\nthat scarlet fever shall be quarantined; that school-children shall be\nsaved from small-pox by vaccination. Medical degrees certify that the\nholders have studied medicine long enough at least to know something about\nit in a way that the common judgment recognises. Nothing is to be said\nagainst such requirements impartially applied to a whole people. They\nsimply must be enforced. Christian Science opposes them, dodges them when\nit can; for it holds that human beings have no bodies except reflections\nof a wretched lie called \"mortal mind.\" In spite of its source, this\ndangerous form of insanity should be dealt with as gently as possible,\nbut certainly should not go unrestrained.[59] Let it conform to laws, not\nspecial to any religion or to any humbug masquerading as a religion, but\ngeneral to the citizens who compose a free and sane community.\n\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[1] From $3.18 to $6.\n\n[2] Mrs. Eddy's statement in her book, _Retrospection and Introspection_,\np. 61.\n\n[3] For proof in detail see Chapters III. and IV.\n\n[4] Our historical sources of information are referred to as we go along,\nbut a good deal of it has come from access to original documents, and from\nliving persons of the highest character who were long and intimately\nacquainted with the subject of our chapter. The names of some of these\nfriends are given by permission.\n\n[5] This circular alone--furnished to the writer by Dr. Quimby's son--is\ncomplete proof as to origin of \"mind-healing\" in the United States.\n\n[6] The reader is advised to consult the pamphlet and the book here\nspecified, in connection with our chapter. (Geo. H. Ellis, Publisher,\nBoston)--G. C.\n\n[7] These press articles and notices have been examined by the writer, and\nare unmistakably genuine, as are the selections.\n\n[8] U. S. Court of Admiralty. Judge Ware was sometimes spoken of as the\nleading citizen of Maine.\n\n[9] _The True History of Mental Science_, page 15.\n\n[10] Philosophy of P. P. Quimby, page 53-54.\n\n[11] Mrs. Sarah Ware Mackay.\n\n[12] The gentleman is Hon. Edwin Reed, of Boston, Mass. His name is given\nby his permission, from a feeling of gratitude to Dr. Quimby, and profound\nrespect for his memory.\n\n[13] Mrs. Eddy's complete name, with reference to these gentlemen, would\nbe Mary Baker Glover Patterson Eddy.\n\n[14] The writer has had these records authenticated at Portland.--G. C.\n\n[15] The original print has been in my hands. A copy of the letter is\npublished in full in _The True History of Mental Science_ (Appendix\nA).--G. C.\n\n[16] The gentleman here traduced is Dr. L. M. Marston of Boston. He is a\npractising physician, and a thoughtful, honest man. He is the author of a\nwell-written book entitled, _Essentials of Mental Healing_, which is much\nsuperior to _Science and Health_, though containing some of the overdone\nconceptions of mind-cure in general. But Dr. Marston properly employs\nmaterial as well as mental medicine.--G. C.\n\n[17] _Retrospection and Introspection_, by Mary Baker G. Eddy, 10th\nthousand, 1896. Pages 7, 8, 9.\n\n[18] Ibid., page 35.\n\n[19] _Retrospection and Introspection_, p. 10.\n\n[20] Ibid., Page 12.\n\n[21] The Great Novel, p. 17.\n\n[22] _Retrospection and Introspection_, p. 28 to p. 35.\n\n[23] The holy romance, page 28 and rest of chapter.\n\n[24] _Retrospection and Introspection_, page 61.\n\n[25] _Retrospection and Introspection_, p. 29.\n\n[26] I have seen a brief article of his, entitled \"Aristocracy and\nDemocracy,\" and written under date of February, 1863, in which he said:\n\"The religion of Christ is shown in the progress of Christian Science,\nwhile the religion of society decays in proportion as liberal principles\nare developed.\"--G. C.\n\n[27] _Retrospection and Introspection_, from p. 40 to p. 43.\n\n[28] This was half a century ago; but the productions--not \"scribblings,\"\nof course, like Dr. Quimby's writings--are yet in mind among Mrs. Eddy's\nold acquaintances. One critic of them has said: \"They were stories wherein\nthe 'feller' married the girl in the last chapter, and they lived happily\never after except when the baby was cutting teeth. The stories were not\nessays, were not metaphysical, and were hardly physical. Had Mrs. Eddy not\nwritten them, I never should have remembered them at all.\"\n\n[29] _Retrospection and Introspection_, p. 38 to p. 46.\n\n[30] Page 45.\n\n[31] \"Judge Hanna\" is Mrs. Eddy's literary factotum. Mr. Tott is an actual\npersonage, but, being \"in Science,\" he will probably never recognize his\npicture--especially as there are many like him.\n\n[32] See advertisements in all Christian Science publications.\n\n[33] Page 47.\n\n[34] This crude materialistic conception of \"God\" as \"filling space\" shows\nmost beautifully the Kindergarten quality of Mother Eddy's \"metaphysics.\"\n\n[35] The figures stand for the pages referred to.\n\n[36] _Retrospection and Introspection_, p. 51.\n\n[37] These facts are well remembered and well recorded. They were of\nspecial interest to such of Mrs. Eddy's \"loyal students\" as had seceded\nfrom her cult.--G. C.\n\n[38] _Retrospection and Introspection_, p. 57.\n\n[39] See _Christian Science History_, by Septimus J. Hanna, p. 42.\n\n[40] For this amazing snivel see _Retrospection and Introspection_, p. 61.\n\n[41] This chapter is written mostly from personal inspection and\nknowledge. An elaborate description of the Church is given in The\nChristian Science Journal for January, 1895.--G. C.\n\n[42] _Retrospection and Introspection_, page 62.\n\n[43] Published in the _Christian Science Journal_ of April, 1895.\n\n[44] _War in Heaven: Sixteen Years' Experience in Christian Science,\nMind-Healing. By Josephine Curtis Woodbury. Third Edition. Boston, Mass.\nPress of Samuel Usher, 1897._\n\n[45] Several suits are pending as this book goes to press. One suit has\nbeen \"thrown out of court.\" It should be said, perhaps, that one of Mrs.\nWoodbury's attorneys, F. W. Peabody, Esq., has such an abhorrence of\n\"Christian Science\" in general, that he has been willing to take the part\nof anybody who could enable him to expose Mrs. Eddy. In this good work may\nhe not be discouraged.\n\n[46] The extraordinary matters of this chapter, however well or ill\nsuppressed, were all published, with great detail, in the issues of the\n_Traveler_ from Dec. 12th to 22d, 1896, and from January 11th to 25th,\n1897. Here they have simply been put into brief form, and relieved of all\nunnecessary harshness. The papers have been preserved for evidence and are\nin my hands.--G. C.\n\n[47] The story, with many details, in issue of Dec. 14, 1896.\n\n[48] A long story underlies the unfortunate marriage and separation of the\nlady and gentleman involved in this case. But the facts are not essential\nto the one and only subject of these pages, \"Christian Science.\"\n\n[49] Issue of Dec. 12, 1896.\n\n[50] There were really two papers handed to Mr. Chamberlain, and he was to\ntake his choice between them. The case, too, was withdrawn, not wholly on\naccount of one thing, but many things which Mrs. Woodbury's lawyer found\nit impossible to contend against. But the most direct cause of the\nwithdrawal is the one given.\n\n[51] Boston _Traveler_, January 21, 1897.\n\n[52] Until it is learned that generation rests on no sexual basis, let\nmarriage continue. Spirit will ultimately claim its own, and the voices of\nphysical sense be forever hushed.--_Science and Health_, page 274.\n\n[53] January 15, 1897.\n\n[54] I have seen what I suppose to be true copies of a series of letters\nwritten by Mary Nash and different members of her family, with one or two\nfrom some of Mrs. Woodbury's \"loyal students.\" The letters might possibly\nbe taken to show that inharmony existed in the Nash family, and that the\ndaughter stayed away from father, mother and brothers on that account,\ninstead of being, if such was the case, just where a sensible and\naffectionate daughter was most needed. The letters, at any rate, show the\nmost united affection for _her_, and more than willingness to do anything\nshe asked, if she would only return to her home. When finally she did so,\ntwo physicians, according to Mr. Nash, declared her to be under hypnotic\ncontrol. Letters, under hypnotism, are suspect.--G. C.\n\n[55] The chapters of our book from XI. to XVI. inclusive, were, in\nsubstance, written at the request of Dr. William T. Harris, United States\nCommissioner of Education, and published in his _Journal of Speculative\nPhilosophy_ for December, 1893, under the caption of \"The Secret of Kant.\"\nThese chapters, while too abstruse for light readers, really explain what\n\"Christian Science\" ignorantly chatters about as \"Metaphysics.\"--G. C.\n\n[56] As this book, including the present chapter, is for readers who may\nor may not understand German, our quotations from Kant are taken from his\n_Critique_ as in the old familiar, accessible translation by J. M. D.\nMeiklejohn (Bohn's Philosophical Library--edition of 1860).\n\n[57] _Critique of Pure Reason_; General Remarks on Transcendental\n\u00c6sthetic, p. 35.\n\n[58] _Critique_; Transcendental Logic, p. 80.\n\n[59] These words were written long before Dr. Alan McLane Hamilton\ntestified, in the Surrogate's Court, (New York City, Feb. 18th, 1901),\nthat sincere Christian Scientists are afflicted with a form of insane\ndelusion.","title":"The Church of St. Bunco : $b A drastic treatment of a copyrighted religion-- Un-Christian Non-Science","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":43815}