Valid Objections to So-called Christian Science/Chapter 4
When the writer of the Book of Proverbs said: "The heart of him that hath understanding seeketh knowledge: but the mouth of fools feedeth on foolishness," he uttered a truth, alas! the world has been but too slow to realize. It is only within the last four hundred years that the application of this has begun to be fully appreciated, and that the philosopher has endeavored to confine his speculations to facts, instead of fancies. We have arrived at the understanding that we must examine and weigh actualities, in order to attain to truth. We must see, and touch, and handle; we must patiently observe, and tabulate our observations, and then draw our conclusions—not jump at them in mere blind ignorance.
It is an axiom, that anything may be proved by a gratuitous assumption of premises. The most ridiculous systems may be built upon a false postulate, provided the latter be granted; and untold harm may ensue to humanity by the following out of such unscientific conclusions.
The peoples who have enjoyed the highest mede of prosperity and moral development have been those who have possessed the largest ownership of the practical faculty—those who have seen things as they actually are, and have dealt with them accordingly. The dreamy and contemplative peoples, whose philosophy emphasizes the subjective side of man, have developed a civilization in which gross superstitions, moral degradation, slavery, cruelty, and disregard of human life are the most prominent features.
The history of Eastern peoples, in contrast with the recorded development of the nations of Europe and the West, brings out this fact with startling force. The difference, in energy and power of organization, between examples of these two widely divergent types, is a verity only too apparent. On the one hand is progress, on the other stagnation and decay. On the one hand is freedom, on the other slavery and oppression. On the one hand is enlightenment, on the other the darkest superstition and ignorance. On the one hand is individualistic development, on the other individualistic decadence. On the one hand are hopefulness and faith, and initiative towards the future, on the other idle, ruminative reflection within the past.
In short, the philosophy which fosters the habit of ignoring the outside world and dwelling continuously upon the thoughts and images raised by our own consciousness, is in the end entirely subversive of all vigorous action. Individuals or peoples whose habits are formed under such an ideal rapidly deteriorate and become inefficient. Man was put into the world to act and to do; not merely to think and to dream.
The mind was given to direct the energies, not to be exercised in shadows of actions within itself. The efferent nerves are a part of the machinery nature has given us to put thought into some active accomplishment; and the neglect of them means the weakening of the whole mental process. If there is, and has been no objective reality for them to act upon, how shall we account for their presence and function in the human organism? Our sight and hearing and touch were accorded by an intelligent Creator, that we might perceive and understand the properties, qualities, and differences of objects beyond ourselves; and that wonderfully adaptive piece of mechanism, the human hand, was evolved, that we might seize hold of material things, make them subservient to will and purpose, and thus help to fulfil the intent of God to make us masters of the world.
Action in life, as Demosthenes asserted in respect of oratory, is an all essential factor. To ignore our relations and obligations in material things is the beginning of death. To moon and to dream, and nothing further—is to drift, unconscious of the tide that sweeps us, until the force of Nature's might, gathering behind, o'erwhelms us in destruction.
But all this mooning and dreaming, this waiting for things to come out right of themselves; this neglecting to exert our personal influence; this dawdling over serious verities; this refusal to perceive evil and pain, present or to come; this banishing of the real importance of the material universe; this ignoring of the fact that the whole of human progress and happiness is due to the application of systematic knowledge to the various departments and conditions of life—I say, all this indefinite good-for-nothingness, is confessed to be the very basis of that pernicious, but to its own votaries precious, movement called Christian Science.
The inspiration of this delusion is from the Paganism of the East; and its exaggerated theories and its insane practices are a reversion to the religion and fetichism of primitive and uncivilized man—they are a plunge backward into the conditions of an age of barbarism. In many places in the world the spectacle may even now be witnessed of the weakness of tribes and nations possessing such a religious system and theory of life, when matched against the civilization which is the product of Christian influences. It is the same old story of inefficiency and moral uncertainty against trained experience and moral definiteness.