you to infer that it was “we” that suffered the mentioned injury, but if
you should carry the language to a court you would not be able to prove
that it necessarily meant that. “We” are Mrs. Eddy; a funny little
affectation. She replaced it later with the more dignified third person.
The quoted paragraph is from Mrs. Eddy’s preface to the first revision of
Science and Health (1883). Sixty-four pages further along–in the body
of the book (the elephant-range), she went out with that same flint-lock
and got this following result. Its English is very nearly as straight
and clean and competent as is the English of the latest revision of
Science and Health after the gun has been improved from smooth-bore
musket up to globe-sighted, long distance rifle:
“Man controlled by his Maker has no physical suffering. His body is
harmonious, his days are multiplying instead of diminishing, he is
journeying towards Life instead of death, and bringing out the new man
and crucifying the old affections, cutting them off in every material
direction until he learns the utter supremacy of Spirit and yields
obedience thereto.”
In the latest revision of Science and Health (1902), the perfected gun
furnishes the following. The English is clean, compact, dignified,
almost perfect. But it is observable that it is not prominently better
than it is in the above paragraph, which was a product of the primitive
flint-lock:
“How unreasonable is the belief that we are wearing out life and
hastening to death, and at the same time we are communing with
immortality? If the departed are in rapport with mortality, or matter,
they are not spiritual, but must still be mortal, sinful, suffering, and
dying. Then wherefore look to them–even were communication possible–
for proofs of immortality and accept them as oracles?”–Edition of 1902,
page 78.
With the above paragraphs compare these that follow. It is Mrs. Eddy
writing–after a good long twenty years of pen-practice. Compare also
with the alleged Poems already quoted. The prominent characteristic of
the Poems is affectation, artificiality; their makeup is a complacent and
pretentious outpour of false figures and fine writing, in the sophomoric
style. The same qualities and the same style will be found, unchanged,
unbettered, in these following paragraphs–after a lapse of more than
fifty years, and after–as aforesaid–long literary training. The
italics are mine:
1. “What plague spot or bacilli were [sic] gnawing [sic] at the heart of
this metropolis . . . and bringing it [the heart] on bended knee?
Why, it was an institute that had entered its vitals–that, among other
things, taught games,” et cetera.–C.S. Journal, p. 670, article
entitled “A Narrative–by Mary Baker G. Eddy.”
2. “Parks sprang up [sic] . . . electric-cars run [sic] merrily
through several streets, concrete sidewalks and macadamized roads dotted
[sic] the place,” et cetera.–Ibid.
3. “Shorn [sic] of its suburbs it had indeed little left to admire, save
to [sic] such as fancy a skeleton above ground breathing [sic] slowly
through a barren [sic] breast.”–Ibid.
This is not English–I mean, grown-up English. But it is fifteen-year–
old English, and has not grown a month since the same mind produced the
Poems. The standard of the Poems and of the plague-spot-and-bacilli
effort is exactly the same. It is most strange that the same intellect
that worded the simple and self-contained and clean-cut paragraph
beginning with “How unreasonable is the belief,” should in the very same
lustrum discharge upon the world such a verbal chaos as the utterance
concerning that plague-spot or bacilli which were gnawing at the insides
of the metropolis and bringing its heart on bended knee, thus exposing to
the eye the rest of the skeleton breathing slowly through a barren
breast.
The immense contrast between the legitimate English of Science and Health
and the bastard English of Mrs. Eddy’s miscellaneous work, and between
the maturity of the one diction and the juvenility of the other,
suggests–compels–the question, Are there two guns? It would seem so.
Is there a poor, foolish, old, scattering flint-lock for rabbit, and a
long-range, centre-driving, up-to-date Mauser-magazine for elephant? It
looks like it. For it is observable that in Science and Health (the
elephant-ground) the practice was good at the start and has remained so,