Christian Science -- Controversial literature; Eddy, Mary Baker, 1821-1910
“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 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 41.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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