And David Hume--the bonny skeptic, David--whose keenness brought the philosophy of his age to a logical standstill, and for the moment broke up all "metaphysics"! Poor David Hume! In the hands of what a "critic" it was, who imagined he had ever furnished a speck of meat for such a haggis as _Science and Health_! For the moment, let us pass by Mr. Emerson, the Puritan mystic of New England transcendentalism, who beamed serenely down on mere "critics," and told them he hoped he "had never said anything that needed to be proved." But Mrs. Eddy's phrase, "_certain German philosophers_," is one that can only refer to Immanuel Kant, with his school of followers, who summed up the pure thinking of the modern world, as Plato and Aristotle summed up the pure thinking of the ancient world. History tells us that Kant was a man who discovered the planet Uranus by mathematics before Herschel found it with a telescope, and who "had mastered all sciences" to date when he lived. Ripe with the knowledge of sixty years, he wrote his _Critique of Pure Reason_. This, the most profound and far-reaching treatise of any age, should have been named "The Analysis of Mind and Matter, Time and Space"; for such was really Kant's subject and achievement. This extraordinary little German professor, Immanuel Kant, was the most regular and temperate of human beings; but he had a touch of asthma, for which, before all the medicinal properties of mind-cure were known, he took daily about a thimble-full of rum. Kant has been frightfully dealt with by his "critics," the most of whose heads he completely pulverized in connection with their activity in his behalf. But suppose Herr Professor Kant could have imagined that any "critic" on earth would ever accuse him of instigating the philosophy of Mary Baker G. Eddy! In that dread event, "the sage of Königsberg," who once lost the thread of a lecture when a button he used to finger was cut from his coat, might have been so disconcerted, so sunk in amazement and despair, as to swallow his whole bottle of liquor, instead of the twentieth of a gill, and to burn his _Critique of Pure Reason_ in a fit of _delirium tremens_. It is well he was tempted into no such catastrophe; for, on getting on a bit, we shall find that every possible system of "metaphysics," to have any scientific foundation in modern thought, must refer itself to Kant's dissection of the universe. CHAPTER VI. "THE PRECIOUS VOLUME." In the world of books, Mrs. Eddy's _Science and Health_ is the specially "precious volume"; for she herself so designates and describes it at the head of a chapter in her _Retrospection and Introspection_.[30] To her, indeed, it is a very precious volume--more precious than even a goodly pile of "the precious metals." Her devotees exchange these for it with sublime certainty that they get more than the worth of their money; and being in great need of science, to say nothing of health, their profuseness may be forgiven.