Christian Science and the Book of Mrs. Eddy
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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AND THE BOOK OF MRS. EDDY. Mark Twain. ‘' It is thefirst time since the damn-days of Creation that a Voice has gone crashing through space with such placid and complacent confidence and command.' I. “And struck another one and bounced again?” last summer, when I was on my “Yes.” THISway back to Vienna from the “And struck another one and bounced Appetite-Cure in the mountains, I fell over yet again?” a cliff in the twilight and broke some “Yes.” arms and legs and one thing or another, “And broke the boulders?” and by good luck was found by some “Yes.” peasants who had lost an ass and they “That accounts for it; she is thinking carried me to the nearest habitation, which of the boulders. Why didn’t you tell her was one of those large, low, thatch-roofed I got hurt, too?” farm-houses, with apartments in the “I did. I told her what you told me garret for the family, and a cunning little to tell her: that you were now but an porch under the deep gable decorated incoherent series of compound fractures with boxes of bright-colored flowers and extending from your scalp-lock to your cats; on the ground floor a large and light heels, and that the comminated projections sitting-room, separated from the milch- caused you to look like a hat-rack.” cattle apartment by a partition; and in the “And it was after this that she wished front yard rose stately and fine the wealth me to remember that there was nothing and pride of the house, the manure-pile. the matter with me?” That sentence is Germanic, and shows “Those were her words.” that I am acquiring that sort of mastery “l do not understand it. I believe she of the art and spirit of the language which has not diagnosed the case with sufficient enables a man to travel all day in one sen- care. Did she look like a person who was tence without changing cars. theorizing, or did she look like one who There was a village a mile away, and a has fallen off precipices herself and brings horse-doctor lived there, but there was no to the aid of abstract science the confirma- surgeon. It seemed a bad outlook; mine tions of personal experience?” was distinctly a surgery case. Then it “Bitte?” was remembered that a lady from Boston It was too large a contract for the was summering in that village, and she Stubenmadchen’s vocabulary; she couldn’t was a Christian Science doctor and could call the hand. I allowed the subject to cure anything. So she was sent for. It rest there, and asked for something was night by this time, and she could not to eat and smoke, and something hot to conveniently come, but sent word that it drink, and a basket to pile my legs in, and was no matter, there was no hurry, she another capable person to come and help would give me “absent treatment” now, me curse the time away; but I cculd p^t and come in the morning; meantime she have any of these things. begged me to make myself tranquil and “Why?” comfortable and remember that there was “She said you would need notjffngd^t nothing the matter with me. I thought all.” there must be some mistake. “But I am hungry, and thirsty,^acjrin “Did you tell her I walked off a cliff desperate pain.” seventy-five feet high?” “She said you would “Yes.” delusions, but must pay no “And struck a boulder at the bottom them. She wants you to particularly and bounced?” remember that there are no such tfungsias “Yes.” hunger and thirst and pain.” 5 86 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AND THE BOOK OF MRS. EDDY. “She does, does she?” no existence ; nothing exists but mind ; the “It is what she said.” mind cannot feel pain, it can only “Does she seem to be in full and imagine it.” functionable possession of her intellectual “But if it hurts, just the same ” plant, such as it is?” “It doesn’t. A thing which is unreal “Bitte?” cannot exercise the functions of reality. ‘ ‘Do they let her run at large, or do they Pain is unreal; hence, pain cannot hurt.” tie her up?” In making a sweeping gesture to indi- “Tie her up?” cate the act of shooing the illusion of pain “There, good-night, run along; you out of the mind, she raked her hand on a are a good girl, but your mental Geschirr pin in her dress, said “Ouch!” and went is not arranged for light and airy conversa- tranquilly on with her talk. “You should tion. Leave me to my delusions.” never allow yourself to speak of how you feel, nor permit others to ask you how 11. you are feeling; you should never concede It w'as a night of anguish, of course —at that you are ill, nor permit others to talk least, I supposed it was, for it had all about disease or pain or death or similar the symptoms of it—but it passed at last, non-existences in your presence. Such and the Christian Scientist came, and I talk only encourages the mind to continue was glad. She was middle-aged, and its empty imaginings.” Just at that large and bony, and erect, and had an point the Stubenmadchen trod on the cat’s austere face and a resolute jaw and a tail, and the cat let fly a frenzy of cat- Roman beak and was a widow in the third profanity. I asked, with caution: degree, and her name was Fuller. I was “Is a cat’s opinion about pain valu- eager to get to business and And relief, but able?” she was distressingly deliberate. She “A cat has no opinion; opinions unpinned and unhooked and uncoupled proceed from mind only; the lower her upholsteries one by one, abolished the animals, being eternally perishable, have wrinkles with a flirt of her hand and hung not been granted mind; Avithout mind, the articles up; peeled off her gloves and opinion is impossible.” disposed of them, got a book out of her “She merely imagined she felt a pain—- hand-bag, then drew a chair to the the cat?” bedside, descended into it without hurry, “She cannot imagine a pain, for imagina- and I hung out my tongue. She said, tion is an effect of mind; without mind, with pity but without passion: there is no imagination. A cat has no “Return it to its receptacle. We deal imagination.” with the mind only, not with its dumb “Then she had a real pain?” servants. ’ ’ “I have already told you there is no I could not offer my pulse, because the such thing as real pain.” connection was broken; but she detected “It is strange and interesting. I do the apology before I could word it, and wonder what was the matter with the cat. indicated by a negative tilt of her head Because, there being no such thing as a that the pulse was another dumb servant real pain, and she not being able to that she had no use for. Then I thought imagine an imaginary one, it would seem I would tell her my symptoms and how I that God in his pity has compensated the felt, so that she would understand the cat with some kind of a mysterious emo- case; but that was another inconsequence, tion usable when her tail is trodden on she did not need to know those things; which for the moment joins cat and Chris- moreover, my remark about how I felt tian in one common brotherhood of ” was an abuse of language, a misapplication She broke in with an irritated— of terms “Peace! The cat feels nothing, the “One does not feel," she explained; Christian feels nothing. Your empty and “there is no such thing as feeling: there- foolish imaginings are profanation and fore, to speak of a non-existent thing as blasphemy and can do you an injury. It existent is a contradiction. Matter has is wiser and better and holier to recognize CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AND THE BOOK OF MRS. EDDY. 587 and confess that there is no such thing as difference; it always comes out the way it ’ disease or pain or death. ’ was before. It was a marvelous mind “I am full of imaginary tortures,” I that produced it. As a mental tour de said, “but I do not think I could be any force it is without a mate, it defies alike more uncomfortable if they were real ones. the simple, the concrete and the occult.” What must I do to get rid of them?” “It seems to be a corker.” “There is no occasion to get rid of I blushed for the word, but it was out them, since they do not exist. They are before I could stop it. illusions propagated by matter, and matter “A what?” has no existence; there is no such thing “A—wonderful structure—combination, as matter. ” so to speak, of profound thoughts—un- “It sounds right and clear, but yet it thinkable ones—un ” seems in a degree elusive; it seems to slip “It is true. Read backwards, or for- through, just when you think you are wards, or perpendicularly, or at any given getting a grip on it.” angle, these four propositions will always “Explain.” be found to agree in statement and “Well, for instance: if there is no such proof.