instances to disregard some rules of grammar and rhetoric, in order to give the requisite shade of thought.
The mental difficulty in understanding him arises from his incompetency as a writer. His reflection upon the poverty of the English language is another form of confessing his ignorance of it; and his disregard of the rules of grammar and rhetoric does not result from his difficulty in giving shades of thought, but from his lack of knowledge of the language. Mrs. Eddy thus described him in 1883:
When he entered the class of my husband, the late Asa G. Eddy, in 1879, he had no knowledge whatever, and claimed none, as can be shown under his own signature, of Metaphysics or Christian Science.... While teaching him my system of Mental Healing, his motives and aims and the general constitution of his mind were found so remote from the requirements of Christian Science, that his teacher despaired of imparting to him a due understanding of the subject. Perhaps it was to meet this great want without remedying it, and cover his lack of learning, that he committed to memory many paragraphs from my works, and is in the habit of repeating them in his attempts to lecture. He, who now proclaims himself a professor in the solemn department that he assumes as a jay in borrowed plumes, was the most ignorant and empty-minded scholar I ever remember of examining.
That his earlier work consists largely of passages taken from Mrs. Eddy's writings, and that it is as a whole in every respect inferior to them, is the simple statement of a fact. He has, however, acquired considerable reputation, and has a constituency. Before advancing the fundamental principles of his system, he attempts to show the inconsistencies of medical science in the following passage:
Materia medica teaches that mercury cures, also that mercury kills; that ipecac causes vomiting, and that an overdose
