portraiture with a noumenon; if portraiture should make a noise, a way
could be found to silence it, but even then it could not be done with a
noumenon. Not even with a brick, some authorities think.
“It may be that the mortal life-battle still wages,” etc. Page 35.
That is clumsy. Battles do not wage, battles are waged. Mrs. Eddy has
one very curious and interesting peculiarity: whenever she notices that
she is chortling along without saying anything, she pulls up with a
sudden “God is over us all,” or some other sounding irrelevancy, and for
the moment it seems to light up the whole district; then, before you can
recover from the shock, she goes flitting pleasantly and meaninglessly
along again, and you hurry hopefully after her, thinking you are going to
get something this time; but as soon as she has led you far enough away
from her turkey lot she takes to a tree. Whenever she discovers that she
is getting pretty disconnected, she couples-up with an ostentatious “But”
which has nothing to do with anything that went before or is to come
after, then she hitches some empties to the train-unrelated verses from
the Bible, usually–and steams out of sight and leaves you wondering how
she did that clever thing. For striking instances, see bottom paragraph
on page 34 and the paragraph on page 35 of her Autobiography. She has a
purpose–a deep and dark and artful purpose–in what she is saying in the
first paragraph, and you guess what it is, but that is due to your own
talent, not hers; she has made it as obscure as language could do it.
The other paragraph has no meaning and no discoverable intention. It is
merely one of her God-over-alls. I cannot spare room for it in this
place.
“I beheld with ineffable awe our great Master’s marvelous skill in
demanding neither obedience to hygienic laws nor,” etc. Page 4I.
The word is loosely chosen-skill. She probably meant judgment,
intuition, penetration, or wisdom.
“Naturally, my first jottings were but efforts to express in feeble
diction Truth’s ultimate.” Page 42.
One understands what she means, but she should have been able to say what
she meant–at any time before she discovered Christian Science and forgot
everything she knew–and after it, too. If she had put “feeble” in front
of “efforts” and then left out “in” and “diction,” she would have scored.
” . . . its written expression increases in perfection under the
guidance of the great Master.” Page 43.
It is an error. Not even in those advantageous circumstances can
increase be added to perfection.
“Evil is not mastered by evil; it can only be overcome with Good. This
brings out the nothingness of evil, and the eternal Somethingness
vindicates the Divine Principle and improves the race of Adam.” Page 76.
This is too extraneous for me. That is the trouble with Mrs. Eddy when
she sets out to explain an over-large exhibit: the minute you think the
light is bursting upon you the candle goes out and your mind begins to
wander.
“No one else can drain the cup which I have drunk to the dregs, as the
discoverer and teacher of Christian Science” Page 47.
That is saying we cannot empty an empty cup. We knew it before; and we
know she meant to tell us that that particular cup is going to remain
empty. That is, we think that that was the idea, but we cannot be sure.
She has a perfectly astonishing talent for putting words together in such
a way as to make successful inquiry into their intention impossible.
She generally makes us uneasy when she begins to tune up on her fine-
writing timbrel. It carries me back to her Plague-Spot and Poetry days,
and I just dread those:
“Into mortal mind’s material obliquity I gazed and stood abashed.
Blanched was the cheek of pride. My heart bent low before the
omnipotence of Spirit, and a tint of humility soft as the heart of a
moonbeam mantled the earth. Bethlehem and Bethany, Gethsemane and
Calvary, spoke to my chastened sense as by the tearful lips of a babe.”
Page 48.