Ecdysis

“ These lower animals are less sickly in proportion as they have less mortal mind. This shows it to be human belief that makes the sick body.
According to Professor Agassiz, successive generations do not begin with the birth of new individuals, but with the formation of the egg whence these individuals proceed; and we must look upon the egg as the starting-point of the complicated structures we call human. Here his material research culminates in the vague hypotheses that must attend all false systems. ”

“ Professor Agassiz asks, What can there be of a material nature transmitted through these bodies called eggs, — themselves composed of the simplest material elements, — by which all peculiarities of ancestry belonging to either sex are brought down from generation to generation? The question of the naturalist is, How can matter originate or transmit mind, its very antipodes? It cannot; darkness and doubt encompass the thought that holds creation on a material basis. From a material stand-point, who, by searching, can find out God? All must be Mind, else all must be matter ”

“ Eddy when she established the Christian Science Journal. We quote as follows from her article, “A Timely Issue,” as it appears in “Miscellaneous Writings:”
“Looking over the newspapers of the day one naturally reflects that it is dangerous to live, so loaded with disease seems the very air. These descriptions carry fear to many minds, to be depicted in some future time upon the body. A periodical of our own will counteract to some extent this public nuisance; for through our paper, at the price at which we shall issue it, we shall be able to reach many homes with healing, purifying thought.” ”

“ Eddy is not always consistent in her consideration of matter; sometimes she confines herself to saying that there is neither sensation nor life in matter—which may be true enough save as matter both affords the material for sensation and conditions its forms, which is an immense qualification,—but again and again she calls matter an illusion. Consistently the laws of physics and chemistry should disappear with the laws of hygiene and medicine, but Mrs. ”

“ Eddy's Christian Science, so far as her religious teachings go. Disease as a mental condition caused by error or beliefs, and capable of being cured mentally without medicine or appliances or applications—these ideas are embodied in Mrs. Eddy's book—she certainly heard father teach years before she wrote her book. ”

“ Every object in the universe resolved into thoughts, whose substance is Mind, instead of matter, is included in the generic term man, of which woman is the highest species.
The late Professor Agassiz, in his microscopic examinations of a vulture's egg, gave strength to our conclusions of creation, which mortal belief claims and the immortal idea includes. We had made the discovery in metaphysical science that man means more than an individual outline, with mind inside of it; that he reflects the mind of God, the entire universe, every one of His creations. ”

“ Eddy's arbitrary and limited application of them. Christian Scientists, as is well known, live changed lives both for the better and for the worse. But the reforms that they practice are not half so radical and revolutionary as the system really demands. It demands with as inexorable logic as can fetter human thought that they eat nothing, see nothing, hear nothing, feel nothing, in short that they be rid of their bodies immediately and with the swiftest possible dispatch. Mrs. Eddy has carried her principles into absurdities from some of which common sense restrained the Neoplatonists. ”

“ Eddy, may chance to carry those processes in other directions further than he,—may be more reflective and experimental and judicious, for instance, in matters of diet,—may even be an analytical thinker in matters of science to which the so-called rationalist has given no independent thought. ”

“ History teaches us that human beings have arisen at all periods, in all ranks of life, and in cold blood have given currency to the wildest of theories. But the most interesting point is that at this day when, as we might believe, the advances in physical science have enlightened to some extent even the most unintellectual, Mrs. Eddy is able to find adherents, especially among the best classes of society, and to find them in such numbers that the authorities have been compelled to interfere in repressing the practises of this medical superstition. ”

“ Owen says, "As the best observers agree in stating, that the acephalocyst is impassive under the application of stimuli of any kind, and manifests no contractile power, either partial or general, save such as results from elasticity, in short, neither feels nor moves, it cannot, as the animal kingdom is at present characterized, be referred to that division of organic nature." ”

“ An epicheirema is said to be of the first or second order according as the major or minor premiss is thus supported. The double epicheirema is a combination of the two orders.
§ 805. An epicheirema, it will be seen, consists of one syllogism fully expressed together with one, or, it may be, two enthymemes (§ 557) . In the above instance, if the reasoning which supports the premisses were set forth at full length, we should have, in place of the enthymemes, the two following pro-syllogisms—
(i) All E is A.
All B is E.
.'. All B is A.
Whatever promotes the general welfare is praiseworthy. ”

“ We cannot conceive of cause without selection, nor of effect without a particular determination. But in what lies the selection? In the nature of the cause in correlation with certain objects. Fire is in correlation with certain objects, and consequently exhibits phenomena only with respect to them. In chemistry, under the title of affinities, we have wonderful exhibitions of selection and particular determination. Now motive, according to Edwards, lies in the correlation of the nature of the will, or desire, with certain objects; and volition is the effect of this correlation. ”

“ The science (so-called) of physics would have one believe that both matter and mind are subject to disease, Exploded doctrine and that, too, in spite of the individual's protest and contrary to the law of divine Mind. This human view infringes man's free moral agency ”

“ The Truth of being destroying error sometimes causes chemicalization, as when opposites meet, and one must destroy the other to form a higher basis. But this fermentation should be as painless to the body as to a fluid, for matter has no sensation, and mortal mind alone feels and sees what it names disease. ”

“ Is man a fungus of matter, without mind to help himself, wherein a stiff joint or contracted muscle is as normal and imminent a result of law as the opposite supple and elastic movements of the human system? If what is termed disease can attack and control the body without the consent of mind, sin can do the same, for both are error, and were announced from the beginning in partnership. The metaphysical doctor finds only effects where the physical doctor looks for causes ”

“ Confounding the subjective with the objective vitiates nearly all human philosophy.
Similarly Mr. Edison, in his experiments with those highly interesting phenomena that he supposes to indicate a new force, was so far misled by the muscular contractions of the tongue when applied to a block of iron, through which the suspected force was passing, as to conclude that an objective influence was acting, whereas, after the element of error from the expectation of the experimenter was eliminated, it was quickly shown that the contractions were entirely subjective. ”

“ I agree with the Professor, that every system of medicine claims more than it practises. If the system is Science, it includes of necessity the Principle, which the learner can demonstrate only in proportion as he understands it. Boasting is unbecoming a mortal's poor performances. My Christian students are proverbially modest: their works alone should declare them, since my system of medicine is not generally understood. There are charlatans in “mind-cure,” who practise on the basis of matter, or human will, not Mind. ”

“ For the arguments of metaphysical science to refute the false testimony of material sense is no difficult task, in view of its falsity, and only becomes arduous on account of the tenacity of belief, the force of education, and the overwhelming weight of opinions that the body is matter and suffers, as if matter had sensation. Ignorant of the fact that the mental belief produces the symptoms, the medical doctor establishes the disease in mind and with mind ”

“ Eddy assumes to underlie human experience and possibly to reveal itself through human experience, and it certainly does not follow that while an ideal affirmation is not sick, a human being involved in the necessary relationships of our present material existence may not be. Mrs. Eddy never clearly distinguishes between what a speculative mind may affirm and actual experience report. Her dialectic is a constant wrestling with reality in a range of statement which involves her in many contradictions. ”

“ We have learnt that the successive steps of embryonic development are to be regarded as effects, caused by stimuli, which partly exist in the embryo itself. But it must be noted that not every part of the embryo is dependent on every other one, but that there exists a great independence Self-differentiation. of the parts, to a varying degree in every case. This partial independence has been called self-differentiation (Selbstdifferenzierung) by Roux, and is certainly a characteristic feature of ontogeny. ”

“ Students of metaphysics, mistaught by some mountebank, have inquired of our students when it was safe to check a fever. When you cannot cure a fever metaphysically after admitting this error of physics, namely, that a fever must run its course. Fearing and admitting the power and necessities of matter never follows with those taught the metaphysical fact that all is Mind. Individuals mistaught have said to us, “We give medicine for certain diseases, to start the recovery of our patients, but finish them up with mind.” Now, what is the principle of that practice, matter or mind? ”

“ The further away from the centre or from the nucleus, the newer is the formation of the strata of moments, and the more unstable is their structural and functional relationship within the total aggregate. Hence, when the process of degeneration sets in affecting the controlling nucleus, the associative ties of moments within the aggregate become lowered, and the newest strata, the most remote from the nucleus are the first to be affected, the process passing from newer to older strata. In other words, the process of degeneration is from periphery to centre. ”

“ Eddy originated any of the thoughts and reasonings out of which the book Science and Health is constructed; and I cannot believe, and do not believe that she ever wrote any part of that book.
I think that if anything in the world stands proven, and well and solidly proven, by unimpeachable testimony—the treacherous testimony of her own pen in her known and undisputed literary productions—it is that Mrs. Eddy is not capable of thinking upon high planes, nor of reasoning clearly nor writing intelligently upon low ones. ”

“ Agassiz, the celebrated naturalist and author, wisely said: “Every great scientific truth goes through three stages. First, people say it conflicts with the Bible. Next, they say it has been discovered before. Lastly, they say they have always believed it.”
The first attack upon me was: Mrs. Eddy misinterprets the Scriptures; second, she has stolen the contents of her book, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” from one P. P. Quimby (an obscure, uneducated man) , and that he is the founder of Christian Science. ”

“ Eddy. “Human knowledge inculcates that it is, while science indicates that it is not.” Science is thus distinguished from human knowledge. Mrs. Eddy’s science is a thing imparted to her by Omniscience, and Omniscience, she says, indicates that marriage is not nearer right than celibacy. ”

“ Related to the perfection of the world is the theory of the harmony of the universe. Mrs. Eddy and the Neoplatonists teach that when nature is considered as a whole there is no discord. The reader can readily see how this theory serves well Mrs. Eddy's contention about disease. It is disorder, and as all disorder, derangement or inharmony is unreal or the absence of reality, disease must be a non-entity. ”

“ Eckisster's type of needling might make a man work harder, it might even make him think harder—but it won't make him think in a different way or look at data from a new angle. Even when your theories are wrong, you use them in such a way that they uncover the data which proves them wrong. ”

“ Just as in the stages of metamorphosis the inequality of phyletic development becomes the more obliterated the more distant and comprehensive, or, in other words, the greater the period of existence of the groups which we compare, so does the unequal divergence of the systems of organs become obliterated as we bring into comparison larger and larger systematic groups. ”

“ The complete process of thought involves both induction and deduction. Every general principle, unless it is self-evident, must either be arrived at through the process of induction, or be accepted without any attempt at verification. Having formed our generalizations, we use them as a basis for further thinking. If we find that the principle always holds, we are satisfied with its validity. In this testing of the generalization tentatively made, the process of thought is deductive. The fact is that in the process which we designate as induction, deduction enters to verify our inference. ”

“ That the human organism, together with all its interdependent parts, organs and functions, is an inseparable whole—a Unit—subject absolutely to Natural Laws. As said St. Paul: "And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it." (Cor. 12-26.)
That disease, therefore, is likewise a unit with a diversity of manifestations which, like all conflicting elements, develop in the individual organism along the lines of least resistance, according to the weakness—hereditary or acquired—of the individual. This we term predisposition. ”