________________________________________________
_ Under the powerful influence of the near treatment and the absent
treatment together, my bones were gradually retreating inward and
disappearing from view. The good work took a brisk start, now, and went
on swiftly. My body was diligently straining and stretching, this way
and that, to accommodate the processes of restoration, and every minute
or two I heard a dull click inside and knew that the two ends of a
fracture had been successfully joined. This muffled clicking and
gritting and grinding and rasping continued during the next three hours,
and then stopped--the connections had all been made. All except
dislocations; there were only seven of these: hips, shoulders, knees,
neck; so that was soon over; one after another they slipped into their
sockets with a sound like pulling a distant cork, and I jumped up as good
as new, as to framework, and sent for the horse-doctor.
I was obliged to do this because I had a stomach-ache and a cold in the
head, and I was not willing to trust these things any longer in the hands
of a woman whom I did not know, and whose ability to successfully treat
mere disease I had lost all confidence. My position was justified by the
fact that the cold and the ache had been in her charge from the first,
along with the fractures, but had experienced not a shade of relief; and,
indeed, the ache was even growing worse and worse, and more and more
bitter, now, probably on account of the protracted abstention from food
and drink.
The horse-doctor came, a pleasant man and full of hope and professional
interest in the case. In the matter of smell he was pretty aromatic--in
fact, quite horsy--and I tried to arrange with him for absent treatment,
but it was not in his line, so, out of delicacy, I did not press it. He
looked at my teeth and examined my hock, and said my age and general
condition were favorable to energetic measures; therefore he would give
me something to turn the stomach-ache into the botts and the cold in the
head into the blind staggers; then he should be on his own beat and would
know what to do. He made up a bucket of bran-mash, and said a dipperful
of it every two hours, alternated with a drench with turpentine and axle-
grease in it, would either knock my ailments out of me in twenty-four
hours, or so interest me in other ways as to make me forget they were on
the premises. He administered my first dose himself, then took his
leave, saying I was free to eat and drink anything I pleased and in any
quantity I liked. But I was not hungry any more, and did not care for
food.
I took up the Christian Science book and read half of it, then took a
dipperful of drench and read the other half. The resulting experiences
were full of interest and adventure. All through the rumblings and
grindings and quakings and effervescings accompanying the evolution of
the ache into the botts and the cold into the blind staggers I could note
the generous struggle for mastery going on between the mash and the
drench and the literature; and often I could tell which was ahead, and
could easily distinguish the literature from the others when the others
were separate, though not when they were mixed; for when a bran-mash and
an eclectic drench are mixed together they look just like the Apodictical
Principle out on a lark, and no one can tell it from that. The finish
was reached at last, the evolutions were complete, and a fine success,
but I think that this result could have been achieved with fewer
materials. I believe the mash was necessary to the conversion of the
stomach-ache into the botts, but I think one could develop the blind
staggers out of the literature by itself; also, that blind staggers
produced in this way would be of a better quality and more lasting than
any produced by the artificial processes of the horse-doctor.
For of all the strange and frantic and incomprehensible and
uninterpretable books which the imagination of man has created, surely
this one is the prize sample. It is written with a limitless confidence
and complacency, and with a dash and stir and earnestness which often
compel the effects of eloquence, even when the words do not seem to have
any traceable meaning. There are plenty of people who imagine they
understand the book; I know this, for I have talked with them; but in all
cases they were people who also imagined that there were no such things
as pain, sickness, and death, and no realities in the world; nothing
actually existent but Mind. It seems to me to modify the value of their
testimony. When these people talk about Christian Science they do as
Mrs. Fuller did: they do not use their own language, but the book's; they
pour out the book's showy incoherences, and leave you to find out later
that they were not originating, but merely quoting; they seem to know the
volume by heart, and to revere it as they would a Bible--another Bible,
perhaps I ought to say. Plainly the book was written under the mental
desolations of the Third Degree, and I feel sure that none but the
membership of that Degree can discover meanings in it. When you read it
you seem to be listening to a lively and aggressive and oracular speech
delivered in an unknown tongue, a speech whose spirit you get but not the
particulars; or, to change the figure, you seem to be listening to a
vigorous instrument which is making a noise which it thinks is a tune,
but which, to persons not members of the band, is only the martial
tooting of a trombone, and merrily stirs the soul through the noise, but
does not convey a meaning.
The book's serenities of self-satisfaction do almost seem to smack of a
heavenly origin--they have no blood-kin in the earth. It is more than
human to be so placidly certain about things, and so finely superior, and
so airily content with one's performance. Without ever presenting
anything which may rightfully be called by the strong name of Evidence,
and sometimes without even mentioning a reason for a deduction at all, it
thunders out the startling words, "I have Proved" so and so. It takes
the Pope and all the great guns of his Church in battery assembled to
authoritatively settle and establish the meaning of a sole and single
unclarified passage of Scripture, and this at vast cost of time and study
and reflection, but the author of this work is superior to all that: she
finds the whole Bible in an unclarified audition, and at small expense of
time and no expense of mental effort she clarifies it from lid to lid,
reorganizes and improves the meanings, then authoritatively settles and
establishes them with formulas which you cannot tell from "Let there be
light!" and "Here you have it!" It is the first time since the dawn-days
of Creation that a Voice has gone crashing through space with such placid
and complacent confidence and command.
[January, 1903. The first reading of any book whose terminology is
new and strange is nearly sure to leave the reader in a bewildered and
sarcastic state of mind. But now that, during the past two months, I
have, by diligence gained a fair acquaintanceship with Science and Health
technicalities, I no longer find the bulk of that work hard to
understand.--M. T.]
P.S. The wisdom harvested from the foregoing thoughts has already done
me a service and saved me a sorrow. Nearly a month ago there came to me
from one of the universities a tract by Dr. Edward Anthony Spitzka on
the "Encephalic Anatomy of the Races." I judged that my opinion was
desired by the university, and I was greatly pleased with this attention
and wrote and said I would furnish it as soon as I could. That night I
put my plodding and disheartening Christian Science mining aside and took
hold of the matter. I wrote an eager chapter, and was expecting to
finish my opinion the next day, but was called away for a week, and my
mind was soon charged with other interests. It was not until to-day,
after the lapse of nearly a month, that I happened upon my Encephalic
chapter again. Meantime, the new wisdom had come to me, and I read it
with shame. I recognized that I had entered upon that work in far from
the right temper--far from the respectful and judicial spirit which was
its due of reverence. I had begun upon it with the following paragraph
for fuel:
"FISSURES OF THE PARIETAL AND OCCIPITAL LOBES (LATERAL SURFACE).--The
Postcentral Fissural Complex--In this hemicerebrum, the postcentral and
subcentral are combined to form a continuous fissure, attaining a length
of 8.5 cm. Dorsally, the fissure bifurcates, embracing the gyre indented
by the caudal limb of the paracentral. The caudal limb of the
postcentral is joined by a transparietal piece. In all, five additional
rami spring from the combined fissure. A vadum separates it from the
parietal; another from the central."
It humiliates me, now, to see how angry I got over that; and how
scornful. I said that the style was disgraceful; that it was labored and
tumultuous, and in places violent, that the treatment was involved and
erratic, and almost, as a rule, bewildering; that to lack of simplicity
was added a lack of vocabulary; that there was quite too much feeling
shown; that if I had a dog that would get so excited and incoherent over
a tranquil subject like Encephalic Anatomy I would not pay his tax; and
at that point I got excited myself and spoke bitterly of these mongrel
insanities, and said a person might as well try to understand Science and
Health.
[I know, now, where the trouble was, and am glad of the interruption that
saved me from sending my verdict to the university. It makes me cold to
think what those people might have thought of me.--M. T.] _
Read next: BOOK I: CHAPTER IV
Read previous: BOOK I: CHAPTER II
Table of content of Christian Science
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book
