Eddy's character is pure and perfect and beautiful, and her history without stain or blot or blemish. But that does not settle it. They sincerely believe she did not borrow the Great Idea from Quimby, but hit upon it herself. It may be so, and it could be so. Let it go--there is no way to settle it. They believe she carried away no Quimby manuscripts. Let that go, too--there is no way to settle it. They believe that she, and not another, built the Religion upon the book, and organized it. I believe it, too.
Finally, they believe that she philosophized Christian Science, explained it, systematized it, and wrote it all out with her own hand in the book Science and Health.
I am not able to believe that. Let us draw the line there. The known and undisputed products of her pen are a formidable witness against her.
They do seem to me to prove, quite clearly and conclusively, that writing, upon even simple subjects, is a difficult labor for her: that she has never been able to write anything above third-rate English; that she is weak in the matter of grammar; that she has but a rude and dull sense of the values of words; that she so lacks in the matter of literary precision that she can seldom put a thought into words that express it lucidly to the reader and leave no doubts in his mind as to whether he has rightly understood or not; that she cannot even draught a Preface that a person can fully comprehend, nor one which can by any art be translated into a fully understandable form; that she can seldom inject into a Preface even single sentences whose meaning is uncompromisingly clear--yet Prefaces are her specialty, if she has one.
Mrs. Eddy's known and undisputed writings are very limited in bulk; they exhibit no depth, no analytical quality, no thought above school composition size, and but juvenile ability in handling thoughts of even that modest magnitude. She has a fine commercial ability, and could govern a vast railway system in great style; she could draught a set of rules that Satan himself would say could not be improved on-- for devilish effectiveness--by his staff; but we know, by our excursions among the Mother-Church's By-laws, that their English would discredit the deputy baggage-smasher. I am quite sure that Mrs. Eddy cannot write well upon any subject, even a commercial one.
In the very first revision of Science and Health (1883), Mrs. Eddy wrote a Preface which is an unimpeachable witness that the rest of the book was written by somebody else. I have put it in the Appendix along with a page or two taken from the body of the book, and will ask the reader to compare the labored and lumbering and confused gropings of this Preface with the easy and flowing and direct English of the other exhibit, and see if he can believe that the one hand and brain produced both.
And let him take the Preface apart, sentence by sentence, and searchingly examine each sentence word by word, and see if he can find half a dozen sentences whose meanings he is so sure of that he can rephrase them--in words of his own--and reproduce what he takes to be those meanings.
Money can be lost on this game. I know, for I am the one that lost it.
Now let the reader turn to the excerpt which I have made from the chapter on "Prayer" (last year's edition of Science and Health), and compare that wise and sane and elevated and lucid and compact piece of work with the aforesaid Preface, and with Mrs. Eddy's poetry concerning the gymnastic trees, and Minerva's not yet effete sandals, and the wreaths imported from Erudition's bower for the decoration of Plymouth Rock, and the Plague-spot and Bacilli, and my other exhibits (turn back to my Chapters I. and II.) from the Autobiography, and finally with the late Communication concerning me, and see if he thinks anybody's affirmation, or anybody's sworn testimony, or any other testimony of any imaginable kind would ever be likely to convince him that Mrs. Eddy wrote that chapter on Prayer.
I do not wish to impose my opinion on any one who will not permit it, but such as it is I offer it here for what it is worth. I cannot believe, and I do not believe, that Mrs. Eddy originated any of the thoughts and reasonings out of which the book Science and Health is constructed; and I cannot believe, and do not believe that she ever wrote any part of that book.
I think that if anything in the world stands proven, and well and solidly proven, by unimpeachable testimony--the treacherous testimony of her own pen in her known and undisputed literary productions--it is that Mrs.
Eddy is not capable of thinking upon high planes, nor of reasoning clearly nor writing intelligently upon low ones.
Inasmuch as--in my belief--the very first editions of the book Science and Health were far above the reach of Mrs. Eddy's mental and literary abilities, I think she has from the very beginning been claiming as her own another person's book, and wearing as her own property laurels rightfully belonging to that person-- the real author of Science and Health. And I think the reason--and the only reason--that he has not protested is because his work was not exposed to print until after he was safely dead.
That with an eye to business, and by grace of her business talent, she has restored to the world neglected and abandoned features of the Christian religion which her thousands of followers find gracious and blessed and contenting, I recognize and confess; but I am convinced that every single detail of the work except just that one--the delivery of the Product to the world--was conceived and performed by another.
APPENDIX A
ORIGINAL FIRST PREFACE TO SCIENCE AND HEALTH
There seems a Christian necessity of learning God's power and purpose to heal both mind and body. This thought grew out of our early seeking Him in all our ways, and a hopeless as singular invalidism that drugs increased instead of diminished, and hygiene benefited only for a season.
