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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.