Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/381

Rh occupied himself with this task, which Mrs. Eddy carefully supervised to see that he did not in the least modify her views and that her favourite phrases were allowed to stand. Beginning with the first edition of the book (1875), and going through the successive editions up to 1886, one sees that what Mr. Wiggin did for Science and Health was to put into intelligible English the ideas which Mrs. Eddy had so befogged in the stating of them. Any one who reads a chapter, a page, or even a paragraph of the 1884 edition, and compares it with the same portion in the edition of 1886, will see the more obvious part of Mr. Wiggin's work. Take, for example, the following paragraph (1884 edition):

What is man? Brains, heart, blood, or the entire human structure? If he is one or all of the component parts of the body, when you amputate a limb, you have taken away a portion of man, and the surgeon destroys manhood, and worms are the annihilators of man. But losing a limb, or injuring structure, is sometimes the quickener of manliness; and the unfortunate cripple presents more nobility than the statuesque outline, whereby we find “a man's a man, for a' that.”

Mr. Wiggin's revision of this passage reads:

What is man? Brains, heart, blood, the material structure? If he is but a material body, when you amputate a limb, you must take away a portion of the man; the surgeon can destroy manhood, and the worms annihilate it. But the loss of a limb or injury to a tissue, is sometimes the quickener of manliness, and the unfortunate cripple may present more of it than the statuesque athlete,—teaching us, by his very deprivations, that “a man's a man, for a' that.”

In the above example Mr. Wiggin's changes are only with regard to composition, such as any theme-reader might suggest in the work of an untrained student. But in many instances he was able to be of even greater assistance to Mrs. Eddy by