Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/129

Rh practice was pernicious. She tells the story as follows, in a pamphlet, The Science of Man, published in 1876:

When we commenced this science, we permitted students to manipulate the head, ignorant that it could do harm, or hinder the power of mind acting in an opposite direction, viz., while the hands were at work and the mind directing material action. We regret to say it was the sins of a young student that called our attention to this question for the first time, and placed it in a new moral and physical aspect. By thorough examination and tests, we learned manipulation hinders instead of helps mental healing; it also establishes a mesmeric connection between patient and practitioner that gives the latter opportunity and power to govern the thoughts and actions of his patients in any direction he chooses, and with error instead of truth. This can injure the patients and must always prevent a scientific result. . . . Since our discovery of this malpractice in 1872, we have never permitted a student with our consent to manipulate in the least, and this process unlearned is utterly worthless to benefit the sick.

This is an admission on Mrs. Eddy's part that, for six years after her discovery of the "absolute principle of metaphysical healing," she herself taught the method which she now asserts disproves that Quimby ever healed by the power of mind. Quimby's adherents maintain that the fact that during these six years she followed his instructions implicitly and rubbed her patients' heads, is merely another proof that she obtained her original conception of mental healing from him. In Miscellaneous Writings Mrs. Eddy explains this head-rubbing on the same ground as did Quimby,—that is, that the average weak and doubting mind needed an outward sign:

It was after Mr. Quimby's death, that I discovered, in 1866, the momentous facts relating to Mind and its superiority over matter, and named my discovery Christian Science. Yet, there remained the difficulty of adjusting in the scale of Science a metaphysical practice, and settling the question, What shall be the outward sign of such a practice: if a