opposite opinions. And for this purpose I select as spokesman a distinguished naturalist, who is also an able psychologist, and to whom, therefore, I shall afterward have occasion frequently to refer, as on both these accounts the most competent as well as the most representative of my opponents. In his presidential address before the Biological Section of the British Association in 1879, Mr. Mivart is reported to have said:
"I have no wish to ignore the marvelous powers of animals, or the resemblance of their actions to those of man. No one can reasonably deny that many of them have feelings, emotions, and sense-perceptions similar to our own; that they exercise voluntary motion, and perform actions grouped in complex ways for definite ends; that they to a certain extent learn by experience, and combine perceptions and reminiscences so as to draw practical inferences, directly apprehending objects standing in different relations one to another, so that, in a sense, they may be said to apprehend relations. They will show hesitation, ending apparently, after a conflict of desires, with what looks like choice or volition; and such animals as the dog will not only exhibit the most marvelous fidelity and affection, but will also manifest evident signs of shame, which may seem the outcome of incipient moral perceptions. It is no great wonder, then, that so many persons, little given to patient and careful introspection, should fail to perceive any radical distinction between a nature thus gifted and the intellectual nature of man."
| SCIENCE AND "CHRISTIAN SCIENCE." |
By FREDERIK A. FERNALD.
THE doctrine known as Christian Science has gained so large a number of followers, it promises the freedom from disease which so many afflicted persons are longing for, it appeals to the religious sentiments, which are so powerful to sway the mass of mankind, and also claims a basis in science from which the world is constantly expecting fresh surprises, that it has aroused the interest of thousands who are trying to decide whether it is a revelation of truth or a contagious delusion.
Christian Science was "discovered" by Mrs. Mary B. Eddy, then of Lynn, Mass., in 1866. The leading features of her doctrine are that "everything is Mind," that there is but one Mind, which is God, and that "man is the idea of God." Our bodies, and the things around us, houses and furniture, trees, rocks, and earth—all things composed of matter—do not really exist, but are only the ideas of mind, something like the things of a dream. Matter,
