and that the practice in the miscellaneous, outside, small-game field was
very bad at the start and was never less bad at any later time.
I wish to say that of Mrs. Eddy I am not requiring perfect English, but
only good English. No one can write perfect English and keep it up
through a stretch of ten chapters. It has never been done. It was
approached in the “well of English undefiled”; it has been approached in
Mrs. Eddy’s Annex to that Book; it has been approached in several English
grammars; I have even approached it myself; but none of us has made port.
Now, the English of Science and Health is good. In passages to be found
in Mrs. Eddy’s Autobiography (on pages 53, 57, 101, and 113), and on page
6 of her squalid preface to Science and Health, first revision, she seems
to me to claim the whole and sole authorship of the book. That she wrote
the Autobiography, and that preface, and the Poems, and the Plague-spot-
Bacilli, we are not permitted to doubt. Indeed, we know she wrote them.
But the very certainty that she wrote these things compels a doubt that
she wrote Science and Health. She is guilty of little awkwardnesses of
expression in the Autobiography which a practiced pen would hardly allow
to go uncorrected in even a hasty private letter, and could not dream of
passing by uncorrected in passages intended for print. But she passes
them placidly by; as placidly as if she did not suspect that they were
offenses against third-class English. I think that that placidity was
born of that very unawareness, so to speak. I will cite a few instances
from the Autobiography. The italics are mine:
“I remember reading in my childhood certain manuscripts containing
Scriptural Sonnets, besides other verses and enigmas,” etc. Page 7.
[On page 27.] “Many pale cripples went into the Church leaning on
crutches who came out carrying them on their shoulders.”
It is awkward, because at the first glance it seems to say that the
cripples went in leaning on crutches which went out carrying the cripples
on their shoulders. It would have cost her no trouble to put her “who”
after her “cripples.” I blame her a little; I think her proof-reader
should have been shot. We may let her capital C pass, but it is another
awkwardness, for she is talking about a building, not about a religious
society.
“Marriage and Parentage “[Chapter-heading. Page 30]. You imagine that
she is going to begin a talk about her marriage and finish with some
account of her father and mother. And so you will be deceived.
“Marriage” was right, but “Parentage” was not the best word for the rest
of the record. It refers to the birth of her own child. After a certain
period of time “my babe was born.” Marriage and Motherhood-Marriage and
Maternity-Marriage and Product-Marriage and Dividend–either of these
would have fitted the facts and made the matter clear.
“Without my knowledge he was appointed a guardian.” Page 32.
She is speaking of her child. She means that a guardian for her child
was appointed, but that isn’t what she says.
“If spiritual conclusions are separated from their premises, the nexus is
lost, and the argument with its rightful conclusions, becomes
correspondingly obscure.” Page 34.
We shall never know why she put the word “correspondingly” in there. Any
fine, large word would have answered just as well: psychosuperintangibly
–electroincandescently–oligarcheologically–sanchrosynchro-
stereoptically–any of these would have answered, any of these would have
filled the void.
“His spiritual noumenon and phenomenon silenced portraiture.” Page 34.
Yet she says she forgot everything she knew, when she discovered
Christian Science. I realize that noumenon is a daisy; and I will not
deny that I shall use it whenever I am in a company which I think I can
embarrass with it; but, at the same time, I think it is out of place
among friends in an autobiography. There, I think a person ought not to
have anything up his sleeve. It undermines confidence. But my
dissatisfaction with the quoted passage is not on account of noumenon; it
is on account of the misuse of the word “silenced.” You cannot silence