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pubOne.info thank you for your continued support and wish to present you this new edition. Book I of this volume occupies a quarter or a third of the volume, and consists of matter written about four years ago, but not hitherto published in book form. It contained errors of judgment and of fact. I have now corrected these to the best of my ability and later knowledge.

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Publié par	Pub One Info
Date de parution	23 octobre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9782819917168
Langue	English

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PREFACE
Book I of this volume occupies a quarter or a thirdof the volume, and consists of matter written about four years ago,but not hitherto published in book form. It contained errors ofjudgment and of fact. I have now corrected these to the best of myability and later knowledge.
Book II was written at the beginning of 1903, andhas not until now appeared in any form. In it my purpose has beento present a character- portrait of Mrs. Eddy, drawn from her ownacts and words solely, not from hearsay and rumor; and to explainthe nature and scope of her Monarchy, as revealed in the Laws bywhich she governs it, and which she wrote herself.
MARK TWAIN NEW YORK. January, 1907.
BOOK I CHRISTIAN SCIENCE
"It is the first time since the dawn-days ofCreation that a Voice has gone crashing through space with suchplacid and complacent confidence and command."
CHAPTER I
VIENNA 1899.
This last summer, when I was on my way back toVienna from the Appetite- Cure in the mountains, I fell over acliff in the twilight, and broke some arms and legs and one thingor another, and by good luck was found by some peasants who hadlost an ass, and they carried me to the nearest habitation, whichwas one of those large, low, thatch-roofed farm-houses, withapartments in the garret for the family, and a cunning little porchunder the deep gable decorated with boxes of bright colored flowersand cats; on the ground floor a large and light sitting-room,separated from the milch-cattle apartment by a partition; and inthe front yard rose stately and fine the wealth and pride of thehouse, the manure-pile. That sentence is Germanic, and shows that Iam acquiring that sort of mastery of the art and spirit of thelanguage which enables a man to travel all day in one sentencewithout changing cars.
There was a village a mile away, and a horse doctorlived there, but there was no surgeon. It seemed a bad outlook;mine was distinctly a surgery case. Then it was remembered that alady from Boston was summering in that village, and she was aChristian Science doctor and could cure anything. So she was sentfor. It was night by this time, and she could not convenientlycome, but sent word that it was no matter, there was no hurry, shewould give me "absent treatment" now, and come in the morning;meantime she begged me to make myself tranquil and comfortable andremember that there was nothing the matter with me. I thought theremust be some mistake.
"Did you tell her I walked off a cliff seventy-fivefeet high?"
"Yes."
"And struck a boulder at the bottom andbounced?"
"Yes."
"And struck another one and bounced again?"
"Yes."
"And struck another one and bounced yet again?"
"Yes."
"And broke the boulders?"
"Yes."
"That accounts for it; she is thinking of theboulders. Why didn't you tell her I got hurt, too?"
"I did. I told her what you told me to tell her:that you were now but an incoherent series of compound fracturesextending from your scalp-lock to your heels, and that thecomminuted projections caused you to look like a hat-rack."
"And it was after this that she wished me toremember that there was nothing the matter with me?"
"Those were her words."
"I do not understand it. I believe she has notdiagnosed the case with sufficient care. Did she look like a personwho was theorizing, or did she look like one who has fallen offprecipices herself and brings to the aid of abstract science theconfirmations of personal experience?"
"Bitte?"
It was too large a contract for the Stubenmadchen'svocabulary; she couldn't call the hand. I allowed the subject torest there, and asked for something to eat and smoke, and somethinghot to drink, and a basket to pile my legs in; but I could not haveany of these things.
"Why?"
"She said you would need nothing at all."
"But I am hungry and thirsty, and in desperatepain."
"She said you would have these delusions, but mustpay no attention to them. She wants you to particularly rememberthat 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 functionablepossession of her intellectual plant, such as it is?"
"Bitte?"
"Do they let her run at large, or do they tie herup?"
"Tie her up?"
"There, good-night, run along, you are a good girl,but your mental Geschirr is not arranged for light and airyconversation. Leave me to my delusions."
CHAPTER II
It was a night of anguish, of course-at least, Isupposed it was, for it had all the symptoms of it - but it passedat last, and the Christian Scientist came, and I was glad She wasmiddle-aged, and large and bony, and erect, and had an austere faceand a resolute jaw and a Roman beak and was a widow in the thirddegree, and her name was Fuller. I was eager to get to business andfind relief, but she was distressingly deliberate. She unpinned andunhooked and uncoupled her upholsteries one by one, abolished thewrinkles with a flirt of her hand, and hung the articles up; peeledoff her gloves and disposed of them, got a book out of herhand-bag, then drew a chair to the bedside, descended into itwithout hurry, and I hung out my tongue. She said, with pity butwithout passion:
"Return it to its receptacle. We deal with the mindonly, not with its dumb servants."
I could not offer my pulse, because the connectionwas broken; but she detected the apology before I could word it,and indicated by a negative tilt of her head that the pulse wasanother dumb servant that she had no use for. Then I thought Iwould tell her my symptoms and how I felt, so that she wouldunderstand the case; but that was another inconsequence, she didnot need to know those things; moreover, my remark about how I feltwas an abuse of language, a misapplication of terms.
"One does not feel," she explained; "there is nosuch thing as feeling: therefore, to speak of a non-existent thingas existent is a contradiction. Matter has no existence; nothingexists but mind; the mind cannot feel pain, it can only imagineit."
"But if it hurts, just the same - "
"It doesn't. A thing which is unreal cannot exercisethe functions of reality. Pain is unreal; hence, pain cannothurt."
In making a sweeping gesture to indicate the act ofshooing the illusion of pain out of the mind, she raked her hand ona pin in her dress, said "Ouch!" and went tranquilly on with hertalk. "You should never allow yourself to speak of how you feel,nor permit others to ask you how you are feeling; you should neverconcede that you are ill, nor permit others to talk about diseaseor pain or death or similar nonexistences in your presence. Suchtalk only encourages the mind to continue its empty imaginings."Just at that point the Stuben-madchen trod on the cat's tail, andthe cat let fly a frenzy of cat-profanity. I asked, withcaution:
"Is a cat's opinion about pain valuable?"
"A cat has no opinion; opinions proceed from mindonly; the lower animals, being eternally perishable, have not beengranted mind; without mind, opinion is impossible."
"She merely imagined she felt a pain - the cat?"
"She cannot imagine a pain, for imagining is aneffect of mind; without mind, there is no imagination. A cat has noimagination."
"Then she had a real pain?"
"I have already told you there is no such thing asreal pain."
"It is strange and interesting. I do wonder what wasthe matter with the cat. Because, there being no such thing as areal pain, and she not being able to imagine an imaginary one, itwould seem that God in His pity has compensated the cat with somekind of a mysterious emotion usable when her tail is trodden onwhich, for the moment, joins cat and Christian in one commonbrotherhood of - "
She broke in with an irritated -
"Peace! The cat feels nothing, the Christian feelsnothing. Your empty and foolish imaginings are profanation andblasphemy, and can do you an injury. It is wiser and better andholier to recognize and confess that there is no such thing asdisease or pain or death."
"I am full of imaginary tortures," I said, "but I donot 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 theydo not exist. They are illusions propagated by matter, and matterhas no existence; there is no such thing as matter."
"It sounds right and clear, but yet it seems in adegree elusive; it seems to slip through, just when you think youare getting a grip on it."
"Explain."
"Well, for instance: if there is no such thing asmatter, how can matter propagate things?"
In her compassion she almost smiled. She would havesmiled if there were any such thing as a smile.
"It is quite simple," she said; "the fundamentalpropositions of Christian Science explain it, and they aresummarized in the four following self-evident propositions: 1. Godis All in all. 2. God is good. Good is Mind 3. God, Spirit, beingall, 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 anythingabout the difficulty in hand - how non-existent matter canpropagate illusions I said, with some hesitancy:
"Does - does it explain?"
"Doesn't it? Even if read backward it will doit."
With a budding hope, I asked her to do itbackwards.
"Very well. Disease sin evil death deny Goodomnipotent God life matter is nothing all being Spirit God Mind isGood good is God all in All is God. There do you understandnow?
"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 meananything different from what it means when put in any other way.Because it is perfect. You can jumble it all up, and it makes nodifference: it always comes out the way it was before. It was amarvelous mind that produced it. As a mental tour de force it iswithout a mate, it defies