It puzzles us greatly, therefore, to learn that healing can apparently be had nevertheless without the reading of Mrs. Eddy's book, and indeed without the understanding which we are instructed to look upon as itself the healing. Mrs. Eddy tells this story:60 "A case of dropsy, given up by the faculty, fell into my hands. It was a terrible case. Tapping had been employed, and yet the patient looked like a barrel as she lay in her bed. I prescribed the fourth attenuation of Argenitum nitricum, with occasional doses of a high attenuation of Sulphuris. She improved percep- tibly. Believing then somewhat in the ordinary theories of medical practice, and learning that her former physician had prescribed these remedies, I began to fear an aggrava- tion of symptoms from their prolonged use, and told the patient so ; but she was unwilling to give up the medicine when she was recovering. It then occurred to me to give her unmedicated pellets, and watch the result. I did so, and she continued to gain. Finally she said that she would give up her medicine for one day, and risk the effects. After trying this, she informed me that she could get along two days without globules ; but on the third day she again suffered, and was relieved by taking them. She went on in this way, taking the unmedicated pellets — and receiving occasional visits from me — but employing no other means, and was cured." What had "metaphysical healing," that is, healing through understanding, to do with this cure? If understanding is healing, how was this woman, who did not understand, healed ? Of course, Mrs. Eddy would say that by the deception practised on this woman she was got to project herself gradually a well-body, and so she gradually found herself with a well-body. But that is not "metaphysical" healing, in which knowing is being.
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But, it seems, not only may you be healed without un- derstanding, but you may fail to be healed even if you do understand. If you take poison you will die; even, it seems, if you do not know you have taken it. "If a dose of poison is swallowed through mistake, and the patient dies," Mrs. Eddy posits a case,61 "even though physician and patient are expecting favorable results, does belief, you ask, cause this death?" "Even so," she answers, "and as directly as if the poison had been intentionally taken." Then follows the adjustment of the case to the theory. "In such cases," we are told, "a few persons be- lieve the potion swallowed by the patient to be harmless; but the vast majority of mankind, though they know noth- ing of this particular case, and this special person, believe the arsenic, the strychnine, or whatever the drug used, to be poisonous, for it has been set down as a poison by mortal mind. The consequence is that the result is controlled by the majority of opinions outside, not by the infinitesimal minority of opinions in the sick chamber." If this be true, then it is all up with "metaphysical healing." It is not the individual's understanding; it is the common opinion of mankind — not as to this particular case of which few have knowledge — but in general, which determines results. Material things, having the ground of their being and modes of action in the common opinion of mankind, are just as objectively real to the individual as if they had the ground of their being and modes of action in themselves. The in- dividual is helpless in their presence, and all the better understanding which he may possess as to their real nature as illusions, can serve him in no possible way.
A pantheist has no right to a religion. He must be con- tent with a philosophy and its postulates. As a Christian Science Healer already quoted tells us, he understands "the God-nature and its operation," and forthwith is "whole" with that "spiritual, mental and bodily whole- ness" which is his indefeasible right. Get into your place
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