Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/383

Rh throughout the book expurgated some amusing absurdities. Where Mrs. Eddy represents Huxley, Tyndall, and Agassiz as Goliath, and Woman as David going forth to do battle with them, Mr. Wiggin permits Woman to go on with her sling, but suppresses the worthy professors, leaving her to encounter Goliath in the shape of Materialism. It must be remembered that Mr. Wiggin's edition was not made directly from the 1884 edition, but from a manuscript revision of it made by Mrs. Eddy herself. However, when one recalls that the 1884 edition was the result of at least a fourth rewriting, it seems improbable that Mrs. Eddy could have made much headway as to English in her fifth rewriting, the manuscript from which Mr. Wiggin worked.

This collaboration with Mr. Wiggin has sometimes been referred to as discreditable to Mrs. Eddy—chiefly from the fact, doubtless, that, even in her business letters to her publishers, she has persistently referred to Science and Health as "God's book." There could have been no wish on Mrs. Eddy's part to avoid labour, for she has worked at the book almost continuously for half a lifetime. Excluding the chapter called "Wayside Hints," which he wrote, Mr. Wiggin would have been the last man in the world to claim any part in the real authorship of Science and Health. The book has been rewritten again and again since Mr. Wiggin's work upon it stopped, and the editions which bear his revisions have been considerably improved upon, especially in the arrangement of the subject-matter. But the successive editions never began to improve at all over the first one—indeed, it may be said that they grew worse rather than better—until Mr. Wiggin