Chapter 9

Although Mrs. Eddy's book, "Science and Health," was not published until 1875, from the time Mrs. Eddy left P. P. Quimby in 1864 she had been struggling to get his theories before the public. Dr. Patterson, her second husband, left her in 1866, and for the next four years Mrs. Eddy was able to make a bare living by her "Science," wandering about among the little shoe towns near Boston and teaching Quimby's theories here and there for her board and lodging. She went from house to house with her precious copy of Quimby's "Questions and Answers"[2] and the pile of letter-paper, covered with her own notes, which she was forever rewriting and revising. The one thing that everybody knew about Mrs. Glover (Eddy) was that she "was writing a book." While she was staying with the Wentworths, in Stoughton, she carried her pile of manuscript to Boston, and when the printer to whom she showed it demanded to be paid in advance, she tried to persuade Mrs. Wentworth to lend her the money. Had the printer who looked over that confused mass of notes known that they were the nucleus of a book of which over five hundred thousand copies would be sold by 1907, and had he printed the manuscript then and there, Christian Science in its present form would never have existed. For at that time Mrs. Eddy had not dreamed of calling her system of mind cure anything but Dr. Quimby's "Science." She talked of Quimby to every one she met; could talk, indeed, of little else. When she introduced the subject of mental healing to a stranger--and she never lost an opportunity--it was always with that conscious smile and the set phrases which the village girls used to imitate: "I _learned_ this from Dr. Quimby, and he made me _promise_ to teach at least _two_ persons before I _die_."

The story of the Quimby manuscript from 1867 to 1875 and of the gradual growth of Mrs. Eddy's feeling of possession, has already been recounted in an earlier chapter of this history.[3] By the time the first edition of "Science and Health" appeared, Mrs. Eddy said no more about Quimby or her promise to him. Mrs. Eddy has always been able to believe anything she wishes to believe, especially about her own conduct and about that of persons who have displeased her, and it is very probable that by this time she had persuaded herself that she really owed very little to the old Maine philosopher.

_How "Science and Health" was Published_

Although Mrs. Eddy had been working upon her book for about eight years, writing and rewriting with almost incredible patience, she was unwilling to assume any financial risk in getting it printed. George Barry and Elizabeth Newhall, two of her students, agreed to furnish the sum of one thousand dollars, which the Boston printer asked for issuing an edition of one thousand copies. Mrs. Eddy made so many changes in the proofs, continuing her revisions even after the plates had been cast, that she ran the cost of the edition up to about twenty-two hundred dollars, and Miss Newhall and Mr. Barry lost about fifteen hundred dollars on the book. They would, indeed, have lost more, had not Daniel Spofford, much against Mrs. Eddy's will, paid over to them six hundred dollars which he had received for the copies of the book he had sold. Although Mrs. Eddy at that time owned the house in which she lived and had some money in bank, she did not, either then or later, suggest reimbursing Barry or Miss Newhall for their loss.

Aside from the fact that she was unwilling to risk money upon it, Mrs. Eddy believed intensely in her book. One of her devoted students sent copies of "Science and Health" to the University of Heidelberg, to Thomas Carlyle, and to several noted theologians. But the book made no stir outside of Lynn, where it caused some perplexity. There was little about it, indeed, to suggest that it would be an historic volume. It was a book of 564 pages, badly printed and poorly bound; a mass of inconsequential statements and ill-constructed, ambiguous sentences which wander about the page with their arms full, so to speak, heedlessly dropping unrelated clauses about as they go.

Although the basic ideas of the book are Quimby's, and even much of the terminology, the first edition of "Science and Health" was certainly written by Mrs. Eddy. Not only is there every internal evidence of her hand in the style of the book, but a number of her students are still alive who went over portions of the manuscript with her and worked with her upon the proofs. The same George Barry who helped to pay for the publication of the book copied out in longhand twenty-five hundred pages of the manuscript. He brought suit against Mrs. Eddy for payment for "copying the manuscript of the book 'Science and Health,' and aiding in the arrangement of capital letters and some of the grammatical constructions." He produced some of Mrs. Eddy's manuscript in court, and the judge allowed him more than the usual copyist's rate "on account of the difficulty which a portion of the pages presented to the copyist by reason of erasures and interlineations," as it is put in the judge's finding.

Although Mrs. Eddy's book has been enlarged and greatly improved as to its order and grammar, the first edition contains all the essential elements of her philosophy, if such it may be called. Mr. Wiggin did good work in translating the book into comparatively conventional English, and gave a kind of unity to paragraphs and sentences, and later revisers have greatly improved upon his work; but the first edition gave a fairly complete and, on the whole, a comprehensible statement of Mrs. Eddy's platform.

Mrs. Eddy's religion claims to be a system of metaphysics, a system of therapeutics, and an improved form of Christianity. As the founder of a system of idealistic philosophy, Mrs. Eddy does indeed, as Mr. Alfred Farlow says, "begin where the sages of the world left off." Other philosophers have reached the conclusion that we can have no absolute knowledge of matter, since our evidence regarding it consists of sense impressions, and that we can absolutely assert of matter only that it exists in human consciousness; but Mrs. Eddy begins boldly with, "There is no such thing as matter." She reaches her conclusion by steps which she deems complete and logical:

1. God is All in all. 2. God is good. Good is Mind. 3. God, Spirit, being all, nothing is matter.

Mrs. Eddy calls attention to the fact that even if read backward, these propositions mean identically the same as when read in the usual order, and she seems to regard this as conclusive proof of their logical truth. She says, "The metaphysics of Christian Science, like the rules of mathematics, prove the rule by inversion. For example: there is no pain in Truth, and no truth in pain; no nerve in Mind, and no mind in nerve; no matter in Mind, and no mind in matter," etc.

In his article upon Christian Science, published in _The Atlantic Monthly_, April, 1904, Dr. John Churchman says:

The uncompromising idealism, however, which Mrs. Eddy offers us not only has these defects, but is guilty of a far more serious charge. It poses as an explanation, and is in reality a total evasion. To deny that matter exists, and assert that it is an illusion, is only another way of asserting its existence; you are freed by your suggestion from explaining the fact, but forced by it to explain the illusion. It is the old mistake of imagining that an escape from a problem is a solution. You are out of the frying-pan, it is true, but you are in the fire instead.[4]

Having thus disposed of matter, Mrs. Eddy seems to think that her definition has actually changed the nature of the case, and that though we live in houses, eat food, and endure the changes of the seasons, our relation to the material universe is changed because she has defined matter as an illusion.

It is not, however, Mrs. Eddy's definition which is so remarkable, but her application of it. Having stated that matter is an illusion, she asserts that "matter cannot take cold";[5] that matter cannot "ache, swell and be inflamed";[6] that a boil cannot ache;[7] that "every law of matter or the body, supposed to govern man, is rendered null and void by the law of God".[8]

_There is No Material Universe_

Quimby acknowledged the actual existence of the universe, of the physical body, and of disease; Mrs. Eddy teaches that they are all illusory. The earth, the sun, the millions of stars, says Mrs. Eddy, exist only in erring "mortal mind"; and mortal mind itself does not exist. All phenomena of nature are merely illusory expressions of this fundamental error. "The compound minerals or aggregate substances composing the earth, the relations which constituent masses hold to each other, the magnitudes, distances, and revolution of the celestial bodies, are of no real importance.... Material substances, astronomical calculations, and all the paraphernalia of speculative theories ... will ultimately vanish, swallowed up in the infinite calculus of spirit." "Earthquake, wind, wave, lightning, fire, bestial ferocity" are merely the "vapid fury of mortal mind." "Heat and cold are products of mind"--even a "mill at work, or the action of a water wheel," is only a manifestation of "mortal mind force." Apart from mortal belief, there is no such thing as climate.

"Repulsion, attraction, cohesion, and powers supposed to belong to matter are constituents of mind," Mrs. Eddy says. By this she does not mean that these forces exist, for us, in our minds, but that at some time in the dim past "mortal mind" imagined matter and imagined these properties in it. Christ, she says, was able to walk upon the water and to roll away the stone of the sepulcher because he had overcome the human _belief_ in the laws of gravity. (Yet, Mrs. Eddy is continually reminding us that the fall of an apple led Newton to discover a great law, etc.) "Geology," Mrs. Eddy says, "has never explained the earth's formations. It cannot explain them." "Natural Science is not really natural or scientific, because it is deduced from the evidences of the senses." "Vertebra, articulata, mollusca, and radiata are evolved by mortal and material thought." "Theorizing about man's development from mushrooms to monkeys, and from monkeys into men, amounts to nothing in the right direction, and very much in the wrong." But it is not only with the natural sciences that Mrs. Eddy is displeased. "Human history," she says, "needs to be revised, and the _material record expunged_."

Having dismissed the history of the race as trivial, the natural sciences as unscientific, the evidence of the senses as a cheat, and matter as non-existent, Mrs. Eddy proceeds to propound her own curious theory of the Universe and man. She has a theory; incomplete, but ingenious.

_Mrs. Eddy's Exegesis_

Mrs. Eddy says that her theory of the universe is founded, not upon human wisdom, but upon the Bible; and so it is, but she uses both addition and subtraction very liberally to get her Biblical corroboration. The Bible may be interpreted in two ways, Mrs. Eddy says, literally and spiritually, and what she sets out to do is to give us the spiritual interpretation. Her method is simple. She starts with the propositions that all is God and that there is no matter, and then reconstructs the Bible to accommodate these statements. Such portions of the Bible as can be made, by judicious treatment, to corroborate her theory, she takes and "spiritually interprets,"[9] that is, tells us once and for all what the passages really mean; and such portions as cannot possibly be converted into affirmative evidence she rejects as errors of the early copyists. Mrs. Eddy insists that the Bible is the record of truth, but a study of her exegesis shows that only such portions of it as meet with Mrs. Eddy's approval and lend themselves--under very rough handling--to the support of her theory, are accepted as the record of truth; the rest is thrown out as a mass of erroneous transcription. Mrs. Eddy's keen eye at once detects those meaningless passages which have for so long beguiled the world, just as it readily sees in familiar texts an entirely new meaning. She explains the creation of the world from the account in the first chapter of Genesis, but the unknown author of this disputed book would never recognize his narrative when Mrs. Eddy gets through with it.

_Mrs. Eddy's Account of the Creation_[10]

To begin with, Mrs. Eddy says, there was God, "All and in all, the eternal Principle." This Principle is both masculine and feminine; "Gender is embraced in Spirit, else God could never have shadowed forth from out Himself, the idea of male and female." But, Mrs. Eddy adds, "We have not as much authority for calling God masculine as feminine, the latter being the last, therefore highest idea given of Him."

Mrs. Eddy next sets about the creation. The "waters" out of which God brought the dry land, she says, were "Love"; the dry land itself was "the condensed idea of creation." When God divided the light from the darkness, it means, says Mrs. Eddy, that "Truth and error were distinct from the beginning, and never mingled." But Mrs. Eddy has always insisted on the idea that "error" is a delusion which arose first in the mind of mortal man; what is error doing away back here before man was created, and why was God himself compelled to take measures against it? Certainly the account of the Creation which came from Lynn is even more perplexing than that which is related in the Pentateuch.

With regard to the creation of grass and herbs, Mrs. Eddy eagerly points out that "God made every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew." And that, she says, proves that "creations of Wisdom are not dependent on laws of matter, but on Intelligence alone." She admits here that the Universe is the "idea of Creative Wisdom," which is getting dangerously near the very old idea that matter is but a manifestation of spirit. Call the universe "matter," and Mrs. Eddy flies into a rage; call it "an idea of God," and she is serenely complaisant. There was certainly never any one so put about and tricked by mere words; on the whole, it may be said that the English language has avenged itself on Mrs. Eddy.

Arriving at the creation of the beasts of the field, Mrs. Eddy says that "The beast and reptile made by Love and Wisdom were neither carnivorous nor poisonous." Ferocious tendencies in animals are entirely the product of man's imagination. Daniel understood this, we are told, and that is why the lions did not hurt him.

When she comes to the creation of man, Mrs. Eddy accepts the first account given in Genesis, but the second, which states that God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, she rejects as untrustworthy. The first account, she says, "was science; the second was metaphorical and mythical, even the supposed utterances of matter; the scripture not being understood by its translators, was misinterpreted."

_The Story of Adam_

"The history of Adam is allegorical throughout, a description of error and its results," etc. Man was created in God's likeness, free from sin, sickness, and death; but this Adam, who crept in, Mrs. Eddy does not explain how, was the origin of our belief that there is life in matter and was to obstruct our growth in spirituality. Mrs. Eddy says, "Divide the name Adam into two syllables, and it reads, _a dam_, or obstruction." This original method of word-analysis she seems to regard as final evidence concerning Adam. About the creation of Eve, Mrs. Eddy changes her mind. In the later editions of her book she says it is absurd to believe that God ever put Adam into a hypnotic sleep and performed "a surgical operation" upon him. In the first edition she says it is a mere chance that the human race is not still propagated by the removal of man's ribs. "The belief regarding the origin of mortal man has changed since Adam produced Eve, and the only reason a rib is not the present mode of evolution is because of this change," etc.

Not to be warned by the footprints of time, Mrs. Eddy pauses in her revision of Genesis to wonder "whence came the wife of Cain?" But on the whole she profits by the story of Cain, for here she finds one of those little etymological clews which never escape her penetration. The fact that Adam and all his race were but a dream of mortal mind is proved, she says, by the fact that Cain went "to dwell _in the land of Nod, the land of dreams and illusions_." Mrs. Eddy offers this seriously, as "scientific" exegesis.

Mrs. Eddy's conclusion about the Creation seems to be that we are all in reality the offspring of the first creation recounted in Genesis, in which man is not named but is simply said to be in the image of God; but we _think_ we are the children of the creation described in the second chapter; of the race that imagined sickness, sin, and death for itself. The tree of knowledge which caused Adam's fall, Mrs. Eddy says, was the belief of life in matter, and she suggests that the forbidden fruit which Eve gave to Adam may have been "a medical work, perhaps."

_Mrs. Eddy Denies the Atonement_

When she comes to the Atonement, Mrs. Eddy says that Christ did not come to save mankind from sin, but to show us that sin is a thing imagined by mortal mind, that it is an illusion which can be overcome, like sickness and death. It was by his understanding of the truths of Christian Science that Christ remained sinless, healed the sick, and that he "demonstrated" over death in the sepulcher and rose on the third day. His sacrifice had no more efficacy than that of any other man who dies as a result of his labors to bring a new truth into the world, and we profit by his death only as we realize the nothingness of sickness, sin, and death. "God's wrath, vented on his only son, is without logic or humanity, and but a man-made belief."

The Trinity, as commonly accepted, Mrs. Eddy denies, though she seems to admit a kind of triune nature in God by saying over and over again that he is "Love, Truth, and Life."

The Holy Ghost she defines as Christian Science; "This Comforter I understand to be Divine Science."

_Mrs. Eddy's Revision of the Lord's Prayer_

In the course of Mrs. Eddy's revision of the Bible, she paused to "spiritually interpret" the Lord's prayer. She has revised the prayer a great many times, and different renderings of it are given in different editions of "Science and Health." The following is taken from the edition of 1902:

"Our Father-Mother God, all-harmonious, adorable One. Thy kingdom is within us, Thou art ever-present. Enable us to know--as in heaven, so on earth--God is supreme. Give us grace for to-day; feed the famished affections. And infinite Love is reflected in love. And Love leadeth us not into temptation, but delivereth from sin, disease, and death. For God is now and forever all Life, Truth, and Love."

In this interpretation the petitions have been converted into affirmations, and Mrs. Eddy's prayer seems a somewhat dry enumeration of the properties of the Deity rather than a supplication.

This method of "spiritual interpretation" has given Mrs. Eddy the habit of a highly empirical use of English. At the back of her book, "Science and Health," there is a glossary in which a long list of serviceable old English words are said to mean very especial things. The word "bridegroom" means "spiritual understanding"; "death" means "an illusion"; "evening" means "mistiness of mortal thought"; "mother" means God, etc., etc. The seventh commandment, Mrs. Eddy insists, is an injunction against adulterating Christian Science, although she also admits the meaning ordinarily attached to it. In the _Journal_ of November, 1889, there is a long discussion of the ten commandments by the editor, in which he takes up both personal chastity and the Pure Food laws under the command, "Thou shalt not commit adultery."

Mrs. Eddy insists, and doubtless believes, that her "Science" is simply an elaboration, a more advanced explanation, of the teachings of the New Testament. Yet on the subject of repentance, which occupies so important a place in the teachings of Christ, we hear never a word, and upon that consciousness of sin, which is the burden of the Epistles, she is consistently silent. Paul's reiterated explanation of original sin, of the Atonement and Redemption, are ignored. "As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive" is made to read: "As in error all die, so in Truth shall all," etc. Even Paul's "Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" is made substantially to mean, Who shall deliver me from the belief that there is sensation in matter? Whatever cannot be "spiritually interpreted" into a confirmation of Mrs. Eddy's theory that sin, sickness, and death are non-existent, she refuses to consider.

_Mrs. Eddy's Therapeutics_

Mrs. Eddy's theology is, of course, a mere derivative of her system of therapeutics, an attempt to base her peculiar variety of mind-cure upon Biblical authority. In her therapeutics there is nothing new except its extremeness. That the mind is able, in a large degree, to prevent or to cause sickness and even death, all thinking people admit. Mrs. Eddy's fundamental propositions are that death is wholly unnecessary and that the body and the organs of the body have nothing to do with life. A man could live just as well after his lungs had been removed as before, if he but thought he could. "Cold, heat, exercise, study, food, infection, etc., never caused a sick or healthy condition in man." "Scrofula, fever, consumption, rheumatism or small-pox never produced pain or inharmony." "A dislocation of the tarsal joint (ankle-joint) would produce insanity as perceptible as that produced by congestion of the brain, were it not that mortal mind thinks this joint less intimately connected with mind than is the brain."

Sight and hearing do not depend upon the eyes and ears. The nervous system can really cause no suffering. "Nerves are not the source of pain or pleasure." "Nerves have no more sensation, apart from what belief bestows upon them, than the fibre of a plant." What really suffers is mind, or belief; and, if we change that belief, the pain will disappear. "You say a boil is painful," says Mrs. Eddy, "but that is impossible, for matter without mind is not painful. The boil simply manifests your belief in pain, through inflammation and swelling; and you call this belief a boil."

Mrs. Eddy even argues against spanking children because "the use of the rod is virtually a declaration to the child's mind that sensation belongs to matter."[11]

Mrs. Eddy's idea is that our lungs are necessary to us because we think they are, just as we think heavy underwear is necessary in winter. Horses and cows, certainly, do not think much about their lungs, but Mrs. Eddy says that domestic animals are controlled by the beliefs of their human masters, and that we have corrupted the horse and have taught him to have epizooetic and colic. "What," says Mrs. Eddy, "if the lungs are ulcerated? God is more to a man than his lungs." "Have no fears that matter can ache, swell, and be inflamed.... Your body would suffer no more from tension or wounds than would the trunk of a tree which you gash, were it not for mortal mind."

All functional and organic diseases are produced by a popular belief in their reality. "No gastric juice accumulates ... apart from the action of mortal thought."

"Inflammation, hemorrhages, tubercles, decompositions are all dream shadows," "Man is the same after, as before, a bone is broken or a head chopped off."