The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg, and Other Stories
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 it thinks is a tune, but which to persons not members of the band
is only the martial tooting of a trombone, and merely 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 condition, and at
small expense of time and no expense of mental effort she clarifies
it from lid to lid, reorganises and improves the meanings, then
authoritatively settles and establishes them with formulae 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.
IV
A word upon a question of authorship. Not that quite; but, rather, a
question of emendation and revision. We know that the Bible-Annex was
not written by Mrs. Eddy, but was handed down to her eighteen hundred
years ago by the Angel of the Apocalypse; but did she translate it
alone, or did she have help? There seems to be evidence that she had
help. For there are four several copyrights on it--1875, 1885, 1890,
1894. It did not come down in English, for in that language it could not
have acquired copyright--there were no copyright laws eighteen centuries
ago, and in my opinion no English language--at least up there. This
makes it substantially certain that the Annex is a translation. Then,
was not the first translation complete? If it was, on what grounds were
the later copyrights granted?
I surmise that the first translation was poor; and that a friend or
friends of Mrs. Eddy mended its English three times, and finally got it
into its present shape, where the grammar is plenty good enough, and the
sentences are smooth and plausible though they do not mean anything.
I think I am right in this surmise, for Mrs. Eddy cannot write English
to-day, and this is argument that she never could. I am not able to
guess who did the mending, but I think it was not done by any member of
the Eddy Trust, nor by the editors of the 'Christian Science Journal,'
for their English is not much better than Mrs. Eddy's.
However, as to the main point: it is certain that Mrs. Eddy did
not doctor the Annex's English herself. Her original, spontaneous,
undoctored English furnishes ample proof of this. Here are samples from
recent articles from her unappeasable pen; double columned with them
are a couple of passages from the Annex. It will be seen that they throw
light. The italics are mine:
1. 'What plague spot, 'Therefore the efficient
or bacilli were (sic) gnawing remedy is to destroy the
(sic) at the heart of this patient's unfortunate belief,
metropolis... and bringing by both silently and audibly
it on bended knee? arguing the opposite facts in
Why, it was an institute that regard to harmonious being
had entered its vitals (sic) representing man as
that, among other things, healthful instead of diseased,
taught games,' et cetera. (P. and showing that it is
670, 'C.S.Journal,' article impossible for matter to suffer,
entitled 'A Narrative--by to feel pain or heat, to be
Mary Baker G. Eddy.') thirsty or sick.' (P. 375, Annex.)
2. 'Parks sprang up (sic)...
electric street cars run 'Man is never sick; for
(sic) merrily through several Mind is not sick, and matter
streets, concrete sidewalks cannot be. A false belief
and macadamised roads dotted is both the tempter and the
(sic) the place,' et cetera. tempted, the sin and the
(Ibid.) sinner, the disease and its
3. 'Shorn (sic) of its cause. It is well to be calm
suburbs it had indeed little in sickness; to be hopeful is
left to admire, save to (sic) still better; but to
such as fancy a skeleton understand that sickness is not
above ground breathing (sic) real, and that Truth can
slowly through a barren (sic) destroy it, is best of all, for
breast.' (Ibid.) it is the universal and perfect
remedy.' (Chapter xii.,
Annex.)
You notice the contrast between the smooth, plausible, elegant, addled
English of the doctored Annex and the lumbering, ragged, ignorant output
of the translator's natural, spontaneous, and unmedicated penwork.
The English of the Annex has been slicked up by a very industrious and
painstaking hand--but it was not Mrs. Eddy's.
If Mrs. Eddy really wrote or translated the Annex, her original draft
was exactly in harmony with the English of her plague-spot or bacilli
which were gnawing at the insides of the metropolis and bringing its
heart on bended knee, thus exposing to the eye the rest of the skeleton
breathing slowly through a barren breast. And it bore little or no
resemblance to the book as we have it now--now that the salaried
polisher has holystoned all of the genuine Eddyties out of it.
Will the plague-spot article go into a volume just as it stands? I think
not. I think the polisher will take off his coat and vest and cravat
and 'demonstrate over' it a couple of weeks and sweat it into a shape
something like the following--and then Mrs. Eddy will publish it and
leave people to believe that she did the polishing herself:
1. What injurious influence was it that was affecting the city's morals?
It was a social club which propagated an interest in idle amusements,
disseminated a knowledge of games, et cetera.
2. By the magic of the new and nobler influences the sterile spaces
were transformed into wooded parks, the merry electric car replaced the
melancholy 'bus, smooth concrete the tempestuous plank sidewalk, the
macadamised road the primitive corduroy, et cetera.
3. Its pleasant suburbs gone, there was little left to admire save the
wrecked graveyard with its uncanny exposures.
The Annex contains one sole and solitary humorous remark. There is a
most elaborate and voluminous Index, and it is preceded by this note:
'This Index will enable the student to find any thought or idea
contained in the book.'
V
No one doubts--certainly not I--that the mind exercises a powerful
influence over the body. From the beginning of time, the sorcerer, the
interpreter of dreams, the fortune-teller, the charlatan, the quack,
the wild medicine-man, the educated physician, the mesmerist, and the
hypnotist have made use of the client's imagination to help them in
their work. They have all recognised the potency and availability of
that force. Physicians cure many patients with a bread pill; they know
that where the disease is only a fancy, the patient's confidence in the
doctor will make the bread pill effective.
Faith in the doctor. Perhaps that is the entire thing. It seems to look
like it. In old times the King cured the king's evil by the touch of the
royal hand. He frequently made extraordinary cures. Could his footman
have done it? No--not in his own clothes. Disguised as the King, could
he have done it? I think we may not doubt it. I think we may feel sure
that it was not the King's touch that made the cure in any instance,
but the patient's faith in the efficacy of a King's touch. Genuine and
remarkable cures have been achieved through contact with the relics of a
saint. Is it not likely that any other bones would have done as well if
the substitution had been concealed from the patient? When I was a boy,
a farmer's wife who lived five miles from our village, had great fame as
a faith-doctor--that was what she called herself. Sufferers came to
her from all around, and she laid her hand upon them and said, 'Have
faith--it is all that is necessary,' and they went away well of their
ailments. She was not a religious woman, and pretended to no occult
powers. She said that the patient's faith in her did the work. Several
times I saw her make immediate cures of severe toothaches. My mother was
the patient. In Austria there is a peasant who drives a great trade in
this sort of industry and has both the high and the low for patients.
He gets into prison every now and then for practising without a diploma,
but his business is as brisk as ever when he gets out, for his work
is unquestionably successful and keeps his reputation high. In Bavaria
there is a man who performed so many great cures that he had to retire
from his profession of stage-carpentering in order to meet the demand
of his constantly increasing body of customers. He goes on from year
to year doing his miracles, and has become very rich. He pretends to no
religious helps, no supernatural aids, but thinks there is something in
his make-up which inspires the confidence of his patients, and that it
is this confidence which does the work and not some mysterious power
issuing from himself.
Within the last quarter of a century, in America, several sects of
curers have appeared under various names and have done notable things in
the way of healing ailments without the use of medicines. There are the
Mind Cure, the Faith Cure, the Prayer Cure, the Mental-Science Cure, and
the Christian-Science Cure; and apparently they all do their miracles
with the same old powerful instrument--the patient's imagination.
Differing names, but no difference in the process. But they do not give
that instrument the credit; each sect claims that its way differs from
the ways of the others.
They all achieve some cures, there is no question about it; and the
Faith Cure and the Prayer Cure probably do no harm when they do no good,
since they do not forbid the patient to help out the cure with medicines
if he wants to; but the others bar medicines, and claim ability to cure
every conceivable human ailment through the application of their mental
forces alone. They claim ability to cure malignant cancer, and other
affections which have never been cured in the history of the race. There
would seem to be an element of danger here. It has the look of claiming
too much, I think. Public confidence would probably be increased if less
were claimed.
I believe it might be shown that all the 'mind' sects except Christian
Science have lucid intervals; intervals in which they betray some
diffidence, and in effect confess that they are not the equals of the
Deity; but if the Christian Scientist even stops with being merely the
equal of the Deity, it is not clearly provable by his Christian-Science
Amended Bible. In the usual Bible the Deity recognises pain, disease,
and death as facts, but the Christian Scientist knows better. Knows
better, and is not diffident about saying so.
The Christian Scientist was not able to cure my stomach-ache and my
cold; but the horse-doctor did it. This convinces me that Christian
Science claims too much. In my opinion it ought to let diseases alone