|The founder of Christian Science was, indeed, one of the busiest women
of her day. She was preacher, writer, teacher, missionary, organizer,
manager, etc. But even a superficial reading of her books will show that
her activity resembled that of children at play rather than of men
at work. Mrs. Eddy's mind displayed all the qualities and defects of
primitive man. Though incessantly active, she followed in all her mental
efforts the line of least resistance. Children are never at rest of
their own will; they run and romp almost continually; but it is the
activity of play, not of work, which they enjoy. To work requires
concentration and effort in a definite direction, and submission to
rules and regulations; while in play one is at liberty to follow one's
own fancy, moving in any direction and at any speed one pleases. Again,
the worker is expected to show results; the player, on the other hand,
though equally busy, keeps going round and round, or back and forth,
just for the pleasure of being in motion.
Mrs. Eddy had the child's fondness for activity and the child's dislike
for work. She rebelled against discipline. Rules and restrictions were
as distasteful to her as to children who have been allowed to "grow up"
without discipline, while logic and reason meant no more to her than
they would to primitive man.
_Science and Health_ is a book consisting largely of extraordinary
claims put forth with the most provoking indifference to the universally
accepted rules of evidence, and with an abandon suggesting that of
the steed who has thrown his rider. If her readers ask for proofs, she
points to the authority of her name. Has she not received a revelation?
Is she not "the Comforter" whom Jesus promised to send into the world?
And if there are obscure passages in her writings, it is not because
these are really "dark," but because there is not enough light in the
eyes of the readers of her books. This free-and-easy method carries her
through seven hundred pages of her "masterpiece," _Science and Health_,
without encountering the least obstacle or being checked for an instant
by a single difficulty. Writing was like play to her, and sentences and
phrases flow copiously and swell into a veritable flood in her pages,
because what satisfied her was that she could say so much, and not
whether what she said had any basis in fact.
In the Preface to _Science and Health_, Mrs. Eddy, in order to prove the
usefulness of medical knowledge, quotes the example of the antediluvians
who knew nothing of drugs, and yet some of whom lived to be nearly
a thousand years old. Mrs. Eddy makes this statement with as little
concern as a boy tosses a ball. The reasoning that men were healthier
and lived longer before the Deluge because there were then no
physicians, whose presence in our times has shortened human life, may do
for the "child-mind," but is it permitted to a full-grown person to make
such careless use of his or her faculties? How does Mrs. Eddy know that
the antediluvians would not have lived longer if they could also have
had the services of trained and skilful physicians? It would be just as
reasonable to assert that there would have been no Deluge had there
been doctors to prevent it, as to say that the antediluvians owed their
longevity to the lack of them. Without caring to make sure of her data,
or to look into the truth of the statement that there was a flood, or
that before this terrible downpour men lived to be a thousand years
old, Mrs. Eddy accepts the rumour of the tradition as if it were a
demonstrated fact, and proves by it, to her own satisfaction at least,
the utter uselessness and positive menace to the human race of medical
science. What an argument and what a conclusion!
I am not accusing Mrs. Eddy of insincerity, but of mental indolence.
Nothing, for example, but a distaste for work could account for her
failure to verify her references in the following instances, or to
supply to her readers the means of verifying them for themselves. She
had to choose between making assertions and offering proofs, and she
chose the easier of the two. "I have healed Infidels" (p. 359). *
What were their names? Where did they live? Of what maladies were they
healed? "One whom I rescued from seeming spiritual oblivion in which the
senses had engulphed him" (p. 382). And what sort of a disease is that,
and who was the person suffering from it? "A little girl who had badly
wounded her finger" (p. 287); "A woman whom I cured of consumption"
(p. 184); "A famous naturalist says" (p. 548); "One of our ablest
naturalists has said" (p. 553); "It is related that a father" (p.
556), etc., etc. All these stories and illustrations fail completely to
impress the inquiring reader, for the simple reason that Mrs. Eddy did
not take the trouble to furnish the details to render her testimony
admissible. In no court would such statements as "I heard a man say,"
or "I knew some one who heard a man say," or "It has been said by so and
so," be accepted as evidence. Very likely Mrs. Eddy possessed the data,
names, addresses, etc., of the patients and the naturalists she writes
about, but she was too indolent to reach for her note-book, if she
kept one. Again, only mental fatigue or sheer indolence can explain a
statement like the following, from which all the important items which
alone could give it force and effectiveness are left out:--
* The quotations, unless otherwise specified, are from Mrs.
Eddy's _Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures_.
_I have seen age regain two of the elements it had lost--sight and
teeth. A woman of eighty-five whom I knew had a return of sight. Another
woman of ninety had new teeth, incisors, cuspids, bicuspids, and one
molar. One man at sixty had retained his full set of upper and lower
teeth without a decaying cavity_ (p. 247).
Evidently these cases are cited to carry conviction with the reader of
her book; would it not, then, have greatly enhanced their evidential
value had she made it possible for her readers to verify their claims?
But how can they do so when no names or addresses are given! If
Christian Science does not need demonstration, why cite these cases of
remarkable cures at all; if it needs demonstration, why not supply the
details necessary to complete the demonstration?
"I knew a person," writes again Mrs. Eddy, "who when a child adopted
the Graham system to cure dyspepsia" (p. 221); and then she proceeds to
relate how this led him to death's door and he was ready to die, "having
exhausted the skill of the doctors, who kindly informed him that death
was indeed his only alternative," and how "Christian Science saved him,
and he is now in perfect health without a vestige of the old complaint"
(p. 221). Surely this fortunate person would have no objection to have
his name announced and his case investigated. Why, then, suppress-his
identity?
Printed in italics at the foot of page xii of _Science and Health_ will
be found the following notice or advertisement:--_The author (Mrs. Eddy)
takes no patients, and declines medical consultation_.
The above offers an excellent illustration of the distinction between
work and play. Mrs. Eddy, with the mentality she possessed, found it
easier to compose phrases and make vague statements about past cures
than actually to grapple with "patients" or to take part in "medical
consultation," whatever that may mean in Christian Science. After
repeatedly asserting that the only way to demonstrate the truth of her
science is by healing the sick, she herself positively declines to
give this demonstration. It is really puzzling. Here is a woman who had
discovered the only power that can heal the sick as nothing else can,
and no other person understands the _modus operandi_ of this
power better or even as well as she does, and yet she will take no
patients--that is, she will under no circumstances apply her remedy,
however urgent the need for it may be!
Some people might be led to think that Mrs. Eddy's refusal to practise
healing was due to her fear that she might not always succeed, which
would greatly diminish her prestige and prejudice the public against her
discovery. To claim, as we have explained elsewhere, that Mrs. Eddy's
motive in refusing to heal the sick herself was that she might have more
time and strength for matters of higher importance would imply that she
was not strong enough to do both. But would not such an admission prove
fatal to the claim that all is divine Mind, and that in divine Mind
there is no sin, sickness, fatigue, or limitation of any kind?
The husband of Mrs. Eddy died; that was an event calling for an
explanation from the discoverer of an unfailing remedy for all maladies
who happened to be the widow of the deceased. How could any one so
closely related to Mrs. Eddy, and taking her treatment, succumb to
sickness of any kind? Mrs. Eddy looked about for an answer to that
question. "My husband died from the effects of arsenical poisoning
mentally administered" was her first effort at self-defence.
But Mrs. Eddy was quick to realize that she could ill afford to admit
that an imaginary dose of arsenic mentally administered could deprive
a Christian Scientist of his life, for she hastened to explain further
that unfortunately "circumstances debarred me from taking hold of my
husband's case."
"Circumstances," then, killed her husband, since had she not been
debarred by them she would have come to his rescue with her "divine"
science and prevented his death. To further exonerate and defend herself
she is inclined to blame her husband a little. "My husband declared
himself perfectly capable of carrying himself through, and I was so
entirely absorbed in business that I permitted him to try, and when
I awakened to the danger it was too late." Now we know why Christian
Science failed in this particular case. Mrs. Eddy was too busy, and she
awoke to the seriousness of her husband's condition too late. Besides,
the patient himself believed he was quite able to cope with the trouble
without his wife's help. In short, "circumstances" proved too much for
Christian Science. That is why Mrs. Eddy's husband died.
The more Mrs. Eddy explained, the more she had to explain. If Mr.
Eddy was murdered by means of mesmeric poison (whatever that may be),
mentally administered by an absent practitioner who, Mrs. Eddy believed,
was one of her own apostate disciples--that is, if some one could from
a distance kill her husband--what prevented her, by the same absent
treatment, and without taking any time from her other duties, from
defeating the work of the mal-practitioner by a thought or two of her
own? If this could not be done, and since there is a possibility of
other divine healers being so entirely absorbed in business as to
neglect their patients, had we not better hold on to the doctors a
little longer, at least until Christian Science has become a match for
"circumstances, etc."? And if a healer equipped with "divine" science
can have more to do than he or she has the strength to attend to, in
what sense is "divine" science more resourceful than plain, ordinary
science?
But there is more to come. Mrs. Eddy declares that one of her rejected
students tried to kill her in the same way as her husband had been
killed. But he could not, "because I instantly gave myself the same
treatment that I would give in a case of arsenical poisoning (mentally
administered), and so I recovered, just the same as I could have caused
my husband to recover had I taken the case in time." There is no such
thing as failure with Mrs. Eddy. Her husband would never have died had
she given him the same treatment as she gave herself. Of course, years
later Mrs. Eddy died too; but there, again, "circumstances" must have
proved too formidable for Christian Science, otherwise both the Eddys
might be living still.
The founder of this popular cult believed that she had now explained
the death of her husband to the satisfaction of her faithful flock. She
certainly could have saved Mr. Eddy's life had she not been too busy
with other matters, or "too late" in taking hold of his case. To prove
this she goes on to give examples of her wonderful powers, as will be
seen by the following: "Only a few days ago I disposed of a tumour
in twenty-four hours that the doctors had said must be removed by the
knife. I changed the course of the mind to counteract the effect of the
disease"; and of course the malignant tumour took wings and flew away,
twenty-four hours of Christian Science being all it could stand. It was
really unfortunate that so powerful a healer was prevented by pressure
of "business" from lending a thought to her sick husband. It was not
because she did not want to help him, nor because her "divine" science
was not equal to his trouble, but because of "circumstances." We hope
that in the near future some advanced practitioner of Christian Science
will discover a cure for that terrible malady called "circumstances,"
which reduced Mrs. Eddy to impotency at the bedside of a dying husband;
a cure which will be as effective against "circumstances" as against
tumours, cancer, etc. In comparison with such sophistry or make-believe,
how refreshing is the intellectual honesty which sees true and aims
straight.
"Mortal Mind"
|Mrs. Eddy's efforts to explain what she calls "mortal mind" give us
an even better insight into her mentality. Though constantly denouncing
mortal mind as the source of all human ills, the author of _Christian
Science_ makes no serious attempt to account for its origin. The
fundamentals of Christian Science as expounded by its author are summed
up in the following statements:--
_God is All in All.
God is Good, God is Mind.
God Spirit, being all, nothing is matter.
Life, God, omnipotent good deny death, evil, sin, disease_ (p. 113).
The important deduction which the founder of Christian Science draws
from these assertions is that sin, suffering, sickness, and death do not
exist, since there is no room for them in God, who is All in All, or in
a universe where Mind is the sole reality and "Nothing is matter." Our
experience and our senses may testify to the contrary, but, replies Mrs.
Eddy, "I find that God is true, and every (mortal) man a liar" (p. 113).
In the opinion of Christian Scientists, that ought to end the
discussion. "God is true," never mind what men may say. But what is the
proof that Mrs. Eddy is speaking for the Deity? Calvin and Mohammed too
claimed to speak for the Deity.
If God is the All, whence comes mortal mind? The All plus mortal mind
would give us more than the All. God cannot be the all unless he is
immortal and mortal mind at the same time. It is true that Mrs. Eddy
denies reality to mortal mind. By mortal mind she means false beliefs
about God and man. But how did false beliefs originate in a universe
where God or Good is the only reality?
Mrs. Eddy's efforts to make room for mortal mind in her perfect world
are really amusing, as will be seen by what follows.
Man is defined as "God's spiritual idea, individual, perfect, eternal"
(p. 115). She explains further that, while man is not God, he is
nevertheless made in God's image, and is therefore God-like. The
distinction between God and man, according to Mrs. Eddy, is one of
quantity and not of quality. Jesus Christ was not God, she writes; he
was only "the ideal of God, now and for ever, here and everywhere" (p.
361). It is true Jesus said, "I and my father are one"; but, explains
Mrs. Eddy, what is meant is one in _quality_, not in _quantity_. Jesus
was God in the sense that a drop of water is the ocean, or a ray of
light is the sun--in essence, not in size. In that sense man too is
God, or a little god. Both man and Jesus possess all the qualities of
divinity, but in limited proportions.
"The science of being," our prophetess goes on to say, "reveals man as
perfect, even as the Father is perfect, because the Soul and Mind of the
spiritual man is God" (p. 302), but in quality only, since "man is in _a
degree_ as perfect as the Mind that forms him" (p. 337). It follows that
if man were God-like in quantity as well as in quality--that is, if he
were not undersized or underweighted spiritually, there would have been
no mortal mind, and therefore no sin or sickness in the world. But who
clipped man's divinity, or made him an underling? In a perfect world how
does man happen to be a dwarf?
Forgetting her own statement, that man is not so "bulky" as God, Mrs.
Eddy insists that, as there is no error or sickness in God, there can
be none in man, who is "God's spiritual idea." Yet, in order to
justify Christian Science healing, she is compelled to make a further
distinction between God and man. God is one, but there are two kinds
of men--the spiritual and the mortal, and it is the latter who need the
high-priced services of healers.
"God is not corporeal... mortals are corporeal" (p. 116).
If we ask Mrs. Eddy how man could possess a body and yet be "the
reflection of God," who is incorporeal, she replies that this body of
which she speaks is only a make-believe body; the real man is all
soul, as is the Deity. "The description of man as both material and
spiritual... is the Pandora box from which all ills have gone forth.
Matter is a fiction" (pp. 170-1). From which it follows that man is as
incorporeal as God; but the former _thinks_ he has a body, and hence
the sufferings from which the Deity is immune. "Mistaking his origin and
nature, man believes himself to be combined matter and spirit" (p.
171). This, Mrs. Eddy considers, is as great an absurdity as to think
of Christ as both God and Devil (Belial and Christ). How, then, did man
come to have a body? He has none; he has only come to think he has
one. And how did that happen? "The human mortal mind, by an inevitable
perversion, makes all things start from the lowest." That is the way,
according to the author of _Science and Health_, in which man came to
believe in matter. This false belief is "mortal mind" (pp. 172-89), the
Dragon which the St. George of New England offers to slay for what she
considers a moderate price.
Let it be observed that Mrs. Eddy attributes the existence or the belief
in the existence of "mortal mind" to the "inevitable perversion" of the
human mind. Mark the use of the word "inevitable." Does she mean
that "mortal mind"--that is to say, sin, suffering, and death--were
predestined? If she does not mean that, what made man's departure from
truth, or his "perversion," _inevitable?_ Was there another power,
greater than the All, who pulled man down into error? And how can
Christian Science, if it could not prevent the "perversion" which
called into existence the worst of all as well as the parent of all
diseases--"mortal mind"--be a remedy against the innumerable ills which
flow from it?
In pronouncing "mortal mind" or the "perversion" which called it into
existence inevitable, Mrs. Eddy has virtually created a power
greater than her "All in All," since the latter could not prevent the
catastrophe.
Once more: the reply that man is God-like in every respect except in
size, and that the body is a myth, does not help Mrs. Eddy's argument
in the least. Real or unreal, the human body, or the belief in it, which
causes so much suffering, should have no place in a system founded upon
the dogmatic declaration that all is Mind, and all is Good, and all is
God. The question remains: Why did Mrs. Eddy make room in this perfect
universe for the serpent--mortal mind? As already suggested, without
this false belief in materiality Christian Science would have been a
useless discovery. Mrs. Eddy was debarred by her creed from admitting
the existence of matter; hence she compromised on "a belief in matter,"
which works just as great a havoc as real matter. This arrangement has
given to her army of Christian Science practitioners many (imaginary)
ills to heal. Like Don Quixote, Christian Scientists to-day go forth
to do battle, even though for enemies they have nothing more formidable
than windmills. Physicians treat what they believe to be real maladies;
Christian Scientists combat maladies which they say do not exist--that
is to say, they fight phantoms.
Not only does the author of _Science and Health_ utterly fail, as all
metaphysicians before her have failed, to account for the origin of evil
or mortal mind, in a universe created and governed by Infinite Goodness,
but her doctrine that man, like the Deity, is free from sickness, etc.,
involves her in new contradictions. For example, on page 204 (1910
edition) Mrs. Eddy says that "in Christian Science it can never be said
that man has a mind of his own, distinct from God, the ALL-Mind"; and
more than once she has asserted that man "has neither birth nor death"
(p. 244). Of course, this is no more than a theory; but, even as such,
Mrs. Eddy makes only a limited application of it--that is to say, she
does not follow her theory to its logical consequences. If man has no
mind of his own, but is a replica of the Divine mind, why did the Deity
make so many copies of himself? Was this self-multiplication of the
Divine mind from necessity or from choice? If the former, then necessity
was greater than the Deity; if the latter, then man was an accident,
since the Deity could just as well not have created him at all, being
free to do as he pleased. And if man is a copy of the Deity, why did He
reproduce himself more freely among the inferior races--the blacks
and the yellows--than among the white peoples?
Again, if man has no mind distinct from the Divine, the _All-Mind_,
he ought to have all the attributes of God. God is painless, sinless,
deathless; and so is man, according to Mrs. Eddy. But why stop there?
God is omniscient; is man omniscient too? Then why does he go to school?
God is almighty; is man almighty? Then why does he have to use tools or
ask for help? God is omnipresent; why is man dependent upon the means
of transportation to go from place to place? How, then, does man, who is
not distinct from the _All-Mind_--God, come to possess only one or two
of the Divine attributes?