Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/406

352 encouraging liberal discussion and investigation. In their new activity they were doubtless influenced by Mrs. Eddy's stimulating example. Whatever the more conservative school of mental healers might have to say for themselves, or even for Mr. Quimby, it was Mrs. Eddy who had brought mental healing out of comparative obscurity, who had built up a strong organisation to advertise and push it, and who had sent out scores of missionaries and healers to establish it. It was as a religion, not as a way of thinking or a manner of living, that the new idea could be made to take hold, and Mrs. Eddy had seen this when the mental scientists had not. Indeed, had they realised this fact, it is doubtful whether they would have taken any earlier action, since they believed more in untrammelled individual development than in organised effort.

Although Mrs. Eddy viewed with alarm this growing body of independent writers and investigators, she had really very little to fear from an unorganised body of theorists who, however they might worst her in argument or distance her in reasoning, were certainly not her equals in generalship. Mrs. Eddy was a good fighter, and she knew it. In 1897 she wrote from her peaceful retirement at Concord: "With tender tread, thought sometimes walks in memory, through the dim corridors of years, on to old battle-grounds, there sadly to survey the fields of the slain and the enemy's losses." This from solitude and the peace of age; but there was no tender treading in the years when the battle was on. As soon as she saw signs of activity and consolidation among the people who had been influenced by Dr. Evans, Mrs. Eddy began vigorously to attack them, realising that such an organisation as theirs must