The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg, and Other Stories
to pile my legs in, and another capable person to come and help me curse
the time away; but I could not have any of these things.
'Why?'
'She said you would need nothing at all.'
'But I am hungry and thirsty, and in desperate pain.'
'She said you would have these delusions, but must pay no attention
to them. She wants you to particularly remember that there are no such
things as hunger and thirst and pain.'
'She does, does she?'
'It is what she said.'
'Does she seem to be in full and functional possession of her
intellectual plant, such as it is?'
'Bitte?'
'Do they let her run at large, or do they tie her up?'
'Tie her up?'
'There, good-night, run along; you are a good girl, but your mental
Geschirr is not arranged for light and airy conversation. Leave me to my
delusions.'
II
It was a night of anguish, of course--at least I supposed it was, for
it had all the symptoms of it--but it passed at last, and the Christian
Scientist came, and I was glad. She was middle-aged, and large and bony
and erect, and had an austere face and a resolute jaw and a Roman beak
and was a widow in the third degree, and her name was Fuller. I was
eager to get to business and find relief, but she was distressingly
deliberate. She unpinned and unhooked and uncoupled her upholsteries
one by one, abolished the wrinkles with a flirt of her hand and hung the
articles up; peeled off her gloves and disposed of them, got a book out
of her hand-bag, then drew a chair to the bedside, descended into it
without hurry, and I hung out my tongue. She said, with pity but without
passion:
'Return it to its receptacle. We deal with the mind only, not with its
dumb servants.'
I could not offer my pulse, because the connection was broken; but she
detected the apology before I could word it, and indicated by a negative
tilt of her head that the pulse was another dumb servant that she had no
use for. Then I thought I would tell her my symptoms and how I felt, so
that she would understand the case; but that was another inconsequence,
she did not need to know those things; moreover, my remark about how I
felt was an abuse of language, a misapplication of terms--
'One does not feel,' she explained; 'there is no such thing as
feeling: therefore, to speak of a non-existent thing as existent is a
contradiction. Matter has no existence; nothing exists but mind; the
mind cannot feel pain, it can only imagine it.'
'But if it hurts, just the same--'
'It doesn't. A thing which is unreal cannot exercise the functions of
reality. Pain is unreal; hence pain cannot hurt.'
In making a sweeping gesture to indicate the act of shooing the illusion
of pain out of the mind, she raked her hand on a pin in her dress, said
'Ouch!' and went tranquilly on with her talk. 'You should never allow
yourself to speak of how you feel, nor permit others to ask you how
you are feeling: you should never concede that you are ill, nor permit
others to talk about disease or pain or death or similar non-existences
in your preserve. Such talk only encourages the mind to continue its
empty imaginings.' Just at that point the Stubenmadchen trod on the
cat's tail, and the cat let fly a frenzy of cat-profanity. I asked with
caution:
'Is a cat's opinion about pain valuable?'
'A cat has no opinion; opinions proceed from the mind only; the lower
animals, being eternally perishable, have not been granted mind; without
mind opinion is impossible.'
'She merely imagined she felt a pain--the cat?'
'She cannot imagine a pain, for imagination is an effect of mind;
without mind, there is no imagination. A cat has no imagination.'
'Then she had a real pain?'
'I have already told you there is no such thing as real pain.'
'It is strange and interesting. I do wonder what was the matter with the
cat. Because, there being no such thing as real pain, and she not being
able to imagine an imaginary thing, it would seem that God in his Pity
has compensated the cat with some kind of a mysterious emotion useable
when her tail is trodden on which for the moment joins cat and Christian
in one common brotherhood of--'
She broke in with an irritated--
'Peace! The cat feels nothing, the Christian feels nothing. Your empty
and foolish imaginings are profanation and blasphemy, and can do you an
injury. It is wiser and better and holier to recognise and confess that
there is no such thing as disease or pain or death.'
'I am full of imaginary tortures,' I said, 'but I do not think I could
be any more uncomfortable if they were real ones. What must I do to get
rid of them?'
'There is no occasion to get rid of them, since they do not exist. They
are illusions propagated by matter, and matter has no existence; there
is no such thing as matter.'
'It sounds right and clear, but yet it seems in a degree elusive; it
seems to slip through, just when you think you are getting a grip on
it.'
'Explain.'
'Well, for instance: if there is no such thing as matter, how can matter
propagate things?'
In her compassion she almost smiled. She would have smiled if there were
any such thing as a smile.
'It is quite simple,' she said; 'the fundamental propositions of
Christian Science explain it, and they are summarised in the four
following self-evident propositions: 1. God is All in all. 2. God is
good. Good is Mind. 3. God, Spirit, being all, nothing is matter. 4.
Life, God, omnipotent Good, deny death, evil sin, disease. There--now
you see.'
It seemed nebulous: it did not seem to say anything about the difficulty
in hand--how non-existent matter can propagate illusions. I said, with
some hesitancy:
'Does--does it explain?'
'Doesn't it? Even if read backward it will do it.'
With a budding hope, I asked her to do it backward.
'Very well. Disease sin evil death deny Good omnipotent God life matter
is nothing all being Spirit God Mind is Good good is God all in All is
God. There--do you understand now?
'It--it--well, it is plainer than it was before; still--'
'Well?'
'Could you try it some more ways?'
'As many as you like: it always means the same. Interchanged in any way
you please it cannot be made to mean anything different from what it
means when put in any other way. Because it is perfect. You can jumble
it all up, and it makes no difference: it always comes out the way it
was before. It was a marvellous mind that produced it. As a mental tour
de force it is without a mate, it defies alike the simple, the concrete,
and the occult.'
'It seems to be a corker.'
I blushed for the word, but it was out before I could stop it.
'A what?'
'A--wonderful structure--combination, so to speak, or profound
thoughts--unthinkable ones--un--'
'It is true. Read backwards, or forwards, or perpendicularly, or at any
given angle, these four propositions will always be found to agree in
statement and proof.'
'Ah--proof. Now we are coming at it. The statements agree; they agree
with--with--anyway, they agree; I noticed that; but what is it they
prove--I mean, in particular?'
'Why, nothing could be clearer. They prove: 1. GOD--Principle, Life,
Truth, Love, Soul, Spirit, Mind. Do you get that?'
'I--well, I seem to. Go on, please.
'2. MAN--God's universal idea, individual, perfect, eternal. Is it
clear?'
'It--I think so. Continue.'
'3. IDEA--An image in Mind; the immediate object of understanding. There
it is--the whole sublime Arcana of Christian Science in a nutshell. Do
you find a weak place in it anywhere?'
'Well--no; it seems strong.'
'Very well. There is more. Those three constitute the Scientific
Definition of Immortal Mind. Next, we have the Scientific Definition of
Mortal Mind. Thus. FIRST DEGREE: Depravity. 1. Physical--Passions and
appetites, fear, depraved will, pride, envy, deceit, hatred, revenge,
sin, disease, death.'
'Phantasms, madam--unrealities, as I understand it.'
'Every one. SECOND DEGREE: Evil Disappearing. 1. Moral--Honesty,
affection, compassion, hope, faith, meekness, temperance. Is it clear?'
'Crystal.'
'THIRD DEGREE: Spiritual Salvation. 1. Spiritual--Faith, wisdom,
power, purity, understanding, health, love. You see how searchingly and
co-ordinately interdependent and anthropomorphous it all is. In this
Third Degree, as we know by the revelations of Christian Science, mortal
mind disappears.'
'Not earlier?'
'No, not until the teaching and preparation for the Third Degree are
completed.'
'It is not until then that one is enabled to take hold of Christian
Science effectively, and with the right sense of sympathy and kinship,
as I understand you. That is to say, it could not succeed during the
process of the Second Degree, because there would still be remains
of mind left; and therefore--but I interrupted you. You were about
to further explain the good results proceeding from the erosions and
disintegrations effected by the Third Degree. It is very interesting: go
on, please.'
'Yes, as I was saying, in this Third Degree mortal mind disappears.
Science so reverses the evidence before the corporeal human senses as
to make this scriptural testimony true in our hearts, “the last shall
be first and the first shall be last,” that God and His idea may be to
us--what divinity really is, and must of necessity be--all-inclusive.'
'It is beautiful. And with that exhaustive exactness your choice and
arrangement of words confirms and establishes what you have claimed for
the powers and functions of the Third Degree. The Second could probably
produce only temporary absence of mind, it is reserved to the Third to
make it permanent. A sentence framed under the auspices of the
Second could have a kind of meaning--a sort of deceptive semblance of
it--whereas it is only under the magic of the Third that that defect
would disappear. Also, without doubt, it is the Third Degree that
contributes another remarkable specialty to Christian Science: viz.,
ease and flow and lavishness of words, and rhythm and swing and
smoothness. There must be a special reason for this?'
'Yes--God-all, all-God, good Good, non-Matter, Matteration, Spirit,
Bones, Truth.'
'That explains it.'
'There is nothing in Christian Science that is not explicable; for God
is one, Time is one, Individuality is one, and may be one of a series,
one of many, as an individual man, individual horse; whereas God is one,
not one of a series, but one alone and without an equal.'
'These are noble thoughts. They make one burn to know more. How does
Christian Science explain the spiritual relation of systematic duality
to incidental reflection?'
'Christian Science reverses the seeming relation of Soul and body--as
astronomy reverses the human perception of the movement of the solar
system--and makes body tributary to Mind. As it is the earth which is
in motion, while the sun is at rest, though in viewing the sun rise one
finds it impossible to believe the sun not to be really rising, so the
body is but the humble servant of the restful Mind, though it seems
otherwise to finite sense; but we shall never understand this while we
admit that soul is in body, or mind in matter, and that man is included
in non-intelligence. Soul is God, unchangeable and eternal; and man
coexists with and reflects Soul, for the All-in-all is the Altogether,
and the Altogether embraces the All-one, Soul-Mind, Mind-Soul, Love,
Spirit, Bones, Liver, one of a series, alone and without an equal.'
(It is very curious, the effect which Christian Science has upon the
verbal bowels. Particularly the Third Degree; it makes one think of a
dictionary with the cholera. But I only thought this; I did not say it.)
'What is the origin of Christian Science? Is it a gift of God, or did it
just happen?'
'In a sense, it is a gift of God. That is to say, its powers are from