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:
- God is All in all.
- God is good. Good is Mind.
- 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]