What's What in America

by Eugene V. Brewster

This theory, that there is no reality except thought, is merely a distinctive form of idealism that is as old as the hills, and Mrs. Eddy's doctrine is the resultum of a confusion of isolated thoughts. Read Plato, Hegel, Democritus, the Zend-Avesta, Spinoza, Kant, Bishop Berkeley, Lotze, Hume, and various other works and you will find the threads from which Mrs. Eddy's fabric is woven. But don't imagine that the philosophers named ever believed any such things as Mrs. Eddy has laid down in her books. Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Transcendentalists speak of the supremacy of mind over matter, and all modern physicians recognize the power of the mind over the body; but none of these ever maintained that the discovery of those facts was made by Divine revelation by order of God, to be given to the people at a certain time, at so much per lesson or book.

Mrs. Eddy says that the one reality is God, whose name is Mind or Spirit; that God is All-in-all; that all is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestations; that matter is unknown in the Universe of Mind. Now, if we take all this as mere speculation, all is well. But when we are asked to make these ideas our Bible, our code of human conduct, our bread and butter, our Divine law, that is where we should stop. What matter if all of that is true or false? The world will go around just the same. If Mrs. Eddy had stopped right there, she would not have invited such a storm of criticism as she had to face. But she did not. The critics began their deadly work soon after the first edition of her book came out, and she met it courageously, proceeding to amend her theories to suit the occasion. Constant and frequent changes were made in Science and Health and in her teachings, which was all right except that it disproves her contention that the whole plan came to her as a revelation in 1866, and that it was "God's book and He gave it at once to the people." It really makes but little difference to most of us whether Mrs. Eddy is right in her theory that there is no such thing as matter and that all is spirit, for we are all compelled to act every day as if matter were matter, and, to all intents and purposes, it is. Of course, we are glad to have the truth, but it would be idiotic for a man, who had discovered that there is no such thing as sound, to try to persuade the world that his discovery was so important that a new system of religion must at once be founded on it to regulate the daily affairs of the whole world. Some of the truths in Christian Science are important, but it does not follow that we are to discard all our other religions, beliefs, and modes of living; for Christian Science is only a speculation, and it does not concern most of us. It rightly is no more a religion than is the theory of evolution, which, by the way, Mrs. Eddy did not seem to understand, for she said: "Theorizing about man's development from mushrooms to monkeys and from monkeys to men, amounts to nothing in the right direction, and very much in the wrong."

Mrs. Eddy says that "God is not in the things He hath made"; and, in the next breath she says that since things are matter, and that there is no matter, then there can be no things. In her final revelation of 1866, expressed in 1875, she says that "God is Principle, not person"; yet later, in a later final revelation she says that "Life, Truth, and Love constitute the triune person called God." Again, she says, "Jesus is the human man and Christ is the divine, hence the duality of Jesus, the Christ." And, in 1894, and at other times, she has stated quite plainly that she and Christ were one and the same.

Be all this as it may, Christian Science rests mainly on the hypothesis that sin, sickness, disease and death are not real—that they exist only in thought; that Christian Science can remedy these seeming evils. Had it not been for the curing and healing part of the doctrine, Christian Science would never have become the fad that it has. All the rest of the doctrine would have been looked on merely as an interesting speculation, had not Mrs. Eddy injected the claim that Christian Science cured everything—that it cured even sin as well as suffering. Here, then, was something to interest everybody, and she made the invitation all the more desirable when she added that doctors were "flooding the world with diseases," that the fewer the doctors, the less disease the world would suffer from, and that "as long as you read medical books you will be sick." We all know of thousands of cases where doctors have been of great assistance to humanity, and we know, too, of many serious medical mistakes. We all know that medicine has been much overworked, yet we must all admit that doctors and medicine have made this world vastly better and more healthful. But what has Christian Science done? Mrs. Eddy failed to give to the world the complete, authenticated record of one single case of disease that she cured. True, she said that she had cured certain diseases, but we are left in the dark as to whether they were diseases or what they were. She refused to have medical tests made. She even announced that she had no time to give personal treatments and consultations. At that time she was busy teaching, at $300 a pupil. Besides, according to her theory, there was no such thing as a body, or disease, or pain. She doubts even that Jesus suffered pain on the cross, although the Bible says that He cried out in pain. Either Jesus did suffer pain, or He falsely made those around Him think that He did, and we know that He was incapable of deception. Yet, Jesus Christ and Mrs. Eddy are one and the same.

Christian Science seeks to eliminate pain, whereas most physicians recognize pain as a blessing. It is a danger signal. It warns us of decay, of disease, and of disorders. Were it not for pain, we would allow our teeth to decay, our eyesight to be impaired, and various other organs to degenerate. When we live wrongly, or eat too much, or overtax our powers, Nature warns us to halt, but Christian Science says there is no such thing as suffering, discomfort and pain, except in our imagination.

And thus we could go on for hours pointing out the inconsistencies of Mrs. Eddy's theories, but a short article like this will not permit. Take for example her statement that "Science can heal the sick who are absent from the healers, as well as those present, since space is no obstacle to mind"; and the assertion that "Christian Science divests material drugs of their imaginary power * * * When the sick recover by the use of drugs, it is the law of a general belief, culminating in individual faith that heals, and according to this faith will the effect be"; and "The not uncommon notion that drugs possess absolute, inherent curative virtues of their own involves an error. Arnica, quinine, opium, could not produce the effects ascribed to them except by imputed virtue. Men think they will act thus on the physical system, consequently they do." Does anybody doubt that if the writer of those words walked into a drugstore blindfolded and, unseen by anybody, drank opium, not knowing what it was, she would not immediately feel the effects of that drug? And that if she took any other drug, the effects would not be about the same as they are known to be in practically all cases? Yet who would say, under those circumstances, that Mind has endowed those drugs with the powers to act on the system as they do? If Mind can so act, medicine is just what we want, for Mind can be made to make drugs do even greater things than they have yet done, perhaps to raise the dead.

But why go to greater length to point out the fallacies of this fad that is nothing more than a superstition founded on a truth. Science and Health is simply words, words, words. It is a tangled mass of assembled philosophy from various sources that has but little practical value. That mind, suggestions and imagination have great influence over the body nobody will deny, but nobody but Mrs. Eddy ever attempted to form a religion out of that old fact. Science and Health is founded on the Bible, and pretends to be a key to it. It is a "key," but it is one that breaks and distorts rather than opens. It is an interpretation, and it treats the Book as if it were a puzzle that God left unsolved until He inspired Mrs. Eddy to reveal its secrets, after having kept it from the world for nearly 2,000 years. From the standpoint of a promoter, Mrs. Eddy was wise in calling her doctrine Christian Science and in founding it on the Bible. That many have been helped by Christian Science nobody will deny, but the same can be said of a hundred other theories and beliefs, some of which are admittedly absurd. Some people can be cured with sugar pills and some by an Indian medicineman. Christian Science contains much that is true and good, and much that is false and bad, and perhaps the harm that it has done may not outweigh the good. Nobody knows. Those who get pleasure and satisfaction and peace out of it should not be disturbed, but they should be warned not to let it run away with them.

The Epicureans handed down to us some questions which have never been quite satisfactorily answered, except by the Christian Scientists—who are quite satisfied with their answer. If God is able to prevent evil, and is not willing, where is His benevolence? If God is willing, but not able, where is His power? If God is both able and willing, whence then is evil? The Scientists say there is no evil, and that settles the whole question. The blind man sees nothing. The Occulist teaches us to see: the Scientist teaches us not to see. Excellent thought! When the thief comes, we close our eyes, and lo! we do not see him, for he is not there—and when we open our eyes, nothing else is there.

Consider for a moment the folly of holding that sickness, pain and disease are products of the mind, and that they have no real existence. To say this is to declare that there are no germs and microbes; and to declare that mind causes disease and death is to upset the whole accepted theory of creation and of evolution. Are not animals affected by disease as well as man? If so, who would say that their meager minds could cause it? and if it be said that human minds caused it, how about the millions of animals who suffered pain, disease and death thousands of years before man ever appeared upon earth? Does the Scientist know that there are hundreds of different kinds of microbes, fighting and combatting one another, that the big fish are eating the little ones, that if there were no microbes there could be no putrefaction and that if there were no putrefaction there could be no breaking down of the dead bodies of animals and plants, and that the earth would be encumbered with the dead bodies of these animals and plants of past generations, and that very soon all the organic elements—all the carbon and nitrogen, if not all the hydrogen and oxygen—on the face of the earth would be fixed in these corpses and that all life would perish for want of sustenance? In short, germs and death are just as important, and just as inevitable, as joy and life.