Article February 22, 1913 Issue

I am sure that "Plain Peter" must be an exceptional person

Frederick Dixon—Exeter, England.

Devon and Exeter Daily Gazette

I am sure that "Plain Peter" must be an exceptional person. It is perhaps a weakness that so exceptional a person should, behind the mask of anonymity, accuse those from whom he differs of dishonesty; but as Clerk of Edlin said of "the fighting instruction," there must be a reason for it which the ordinary man is too ignorant to discover. In his original article the critic wrote: "Cunning men have ever been quick to seize hold of this term and apply it to systems and devices from which they hope to draw immoral and unjust benefits, one such, for instance, being Christian Science." In his second article, he draws a discreet veil over this intemperance, but he kindly suggests that I am not quite honest. As for the list of distinguished men whom I quoted against him, he is good enough to admit that "we can, at least, give them credit for being sincere." At this point, the humor of the situation begins to manifest itself, and one remembers that it is "better to err with Pope than shine with Pye."

The simple fact is, that this critic has taken an entire column of your last issue to demonstrate, beyond cavil, that he has not the faintest suspicion of what Christian Science really teaches. He is falling foul of Mrs. Eddy the whole time for teaching something the orthodox theologians as consistently blame her for not teaching. The only conclusion, in short, it is possible to come to is, that he went out of his way, in the first instance, to be insulting to Christian Scientists, without having taken the ordinary means of discovering what Christian Science really teaches. Let me take a single example. He obviously imagines that Christian Scientists believe in an anthropomorphic God. They, of course, do nothing of the sort. If, however, you permit yourself to misrepresent an opponent to the extent of insisting that he define an isosceles triangle as a circle, there is no particular reason why you should not make a reductio ad absurdum of his conclusions. Do not, however, let us dignify such a process with the name of science. It is rather the way in which that astute Taoist, Chuang Tzu, disposed of the teaching of Confucius.

Still, if I may dare say so, I am not quite sure that this critic is so eminent a natural scientist as he gives us to understand. "All that real science asks," he writes, "is that any new theory propounded either by Peter, Paul, or Mrs. Eddy, shall be in harmony with established facts." Now, will he very kindly inform us what an established fact is in natural science? It was once an established fact that the sun moved round the earth; consequently the discovery that it was stationary was unscientific. It was once an established fact that the earth was flat; therefore the discovery that it was a sphere was most unscientific. It was once an established fact that matter was the only reality; therefore the whole of idealistic reasoning was hopelessly unscientific. It was even an established fact that the elements were unchangeable; therefore the discovery of radium was outside the pale of science. When you come to think of it, perhaps the only way to keep within this critic's definition would have been for humanity to continue dancing round mistletoe bushes with bodies painted green and vermilion; for, according to natural science, education has been disestablishing established facts ever since, and one cannot be quite sure that it is going to draw the line at the critic's conclusions.

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