Article August 8, 1903 Issue

Unconscious Misstatement

CLARENCE A. BUSKIRK.

There seem to be many unconscious as well as many unconscionable, deceivers on this earth. These unconscious sinners are so numerous that we find them nearly everywhere,—on the street-cars, on the corners, at social gatherings, in churches, in stores, and conspicuously at weddings, funerals, and picnics. Prevarications seem to run out of their mouths as easily as water runs from an inverted bottle that has lost its stopper. 'And yet they seem to be wholly unaware that they are deceiving at all. They are suffering from the effects of unfortunate associations and teachings. Many of them are highly intelligent people in most things, and many of them are governed by excellent intentions. These considerations greatly mitigate, if they do not wholly extinguish, their moral guiltiness; but they cannot prevent the multitudinous evil consequences from the falsehoods which perpetually proceed out of their mouths.

These unconscious sinners have many modes and methods in telling their untruths. A large class of them are addicted to the vicious habit of remarking that the weather is very bad for sick people and for catching colds; and responsive shiverings and coughings may frequently be witnessed on the part of themselves or of those near them. Another class is sadly given over, as soon as their heads begin to be frosted, to the counting of their years, and to the recounting of beliefs about rheumatism, etc., so that they keep groaning increasingly to the end of their tether. Another class becomes immediately prominent when such words as "measles" or "whooping-cough" get abroad in, their neighborhood, and such learned words as "bacteria," "germs," and "microbes" afford them peculiar delight.

The harm which is constantly being done unwittingly by these croakers and gossips is very great. Yet it did not seem to be recognized, and no serious endeavors were put forth to check it, until Christian Science uncovered and revealed its enormity. Medical practitioners might have been heard recommending cheerful words for the sick-room, and rebuking gloomy looks and prophecies in the presence of their patients. The need for this had been brought to their attention by their every-day observations. But, strange as it may seem to us now, this did not lead the medical profession to any broad and scientific analysis of the mental causation of disease; and the unlicensed freedom of garrulous tongues everywhere talking sickness and error, thereby inflicting immeasurable mischief upon humanity, continued unabated. If the medical profession had not been so exclusively engrossed in experimenting with the different drugs which, one after another, they have tried, extolled, and then abandoned as worse than useless, it is probable that they would long since have reasoned out and learned that the mental causes which they fortuitously have found to affect the sick are also operative upon all persons. If Christian Science had accomplished nothing else than the broad awakening among the better-informed classes of our people to the urgent need for bridling our tongues against gossiping about sickness and evil, it would be entitled to the lasting gratitude of our race.

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