CHAPTER XII
MRS. EDDY'S BELIEF THAT SHE SUFFERED FOR THE SINS OF OTHERS—LETTERS TO STUDENTS—THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF MALICIOUS ANIMAL MAGNETISM—A REVIVAL OF WITCHCRAFT
Indeed, one of the most primitive and fundamental shapes which the relation of cause and effect takes in the savage mind, is the assumed connection between disease or death and some malevolent personal agency. . . . The minds of civilised people have become familiar with the conception of natural law, and that conception has simply stifled the old superstition as clover chokes out weeds. . . . The disposition to believe was one of the oldest inheritances of the human mind, while the capacity for estimating evidence in cases of physical causation is one of its very latest and most laborious acquisitions.—John Fiske.
At the beginning of 1877, her seventh year as a teacher in Lynn, Mrs. Eddy and her Science were little known outside of Essex County, though the first edition of Science and Health had been published more than a year before, and the author was busy preparing a second edition. Her loyal students, however, believed that she was on the way to obtain wider recognition. Miss Dorcas Rawson, Mrs. Miranda Rice, and Daniel Spofford laboured unceasingly for her interests. Mr. Eddy, immediately upon his marriage, withdrew from practice, dropping the patients he had taken over from Mr. Spofford, and devoted himself entirely to his wife's service. Three days after her marriage Mrs. Eddy wrote to one of her students concerning Mr. Eddy: "I feel sure that I can teach my husband up to a
112
