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reflection ; that the things I see with my eyes and touch with my hands do exist , I make not the slightest question . The only thing whose existence I do deny is that which philosophers call matter or corporeal substance .” 22 Eddy , however , denied exactly the component of reality which Berkeley so explicitly left untouched , and equally explicitly made this distinction between herself and Berkeley entirely clear . 23 Also , she states : “ … that by knowing the unreality of disease , sin and death , you demonstrate the allness [ sic ] of God .“ 24 This assertion was made on the basis that “ As human thought changes from one stage to another , of conscious pain to painlessness , sorrow and joy , - from fear to hope and from faith to understanding , - the visible manifestation will at last be manoeuvred by soul , not by material sense ”. 25
As well as introducing original ideas of her own , other forms of idealism , however , are also present within Eddy ’ s many works . The problem is in identifying these and other types of idealism in Eddy ’ s writing is that , in addition to the previously mentioned nebulousness and variable logical structure , she defined a lexicon specific to Christian Science in which many familiar words from theology , psychology and philosophy are used to convey sometimes very different meanings to those which are conventionally the case . A considerable familiarity with Christian Science is therefore a pre-requisite to any further philosophical analysis , and may further explain the dearth of academic works on this subject , the first academic work seeking to prove that her work was a form of idealism ( as opposed to the many preceding nonacademic authors who had sought to prove the opposite ) not appearing until 1948 .
Mary Baker Eddy created great controversy in her lifetime , but also inspired and bettered the lives of many . Her fiercely original intellectual contribution to the world of ideas may justly held to be at times repetitive , nebulous , outlandish and occasionally simply wrong , but I would like to come to her defence with the following quote , by coincidence made in the year she died :
" It is not the critic who counts ; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles , or where the doer of deeds could have done them better . The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena [ … ] who does actually strive to do the deeds ; who knows great enthusiasms , the great devotions ; who spends himself in a worthy cause ; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement , and who at
22
Berkeley quoted in James Munroe Buckley , ‘ The Absurd Paradox of Christian Science ’, The North American Review , Vol . 173 , 1901 , 23 ,
23
Eddy , Mary Baker , Retrospection and Introspection ( Boston : Christian Science Publishing Company , 1901 ), 23-24 .
24
Eddy , Science and Health , 9 . Eddy , Science and Health , 125 .