hich wander about the page with their arms full, so to speak,
heedlessly dropping unrelated clauses about as they go.

Although the basic ideas of the book are Quimby's, and even much of the
terminology, the first edition of "Science and Health" was certainly
written by Mrs. Eddy. Not only is there every internal evidence of her
hand in the style of the book, but a number of her students are still
alive who went over portions of the manuscript with her and worked with
her upon the proofs. The same George Barry who helped to pay for the
publication of the book copied out in longhand twenty-five hundred pages
of the manuscript. He brought suit against Mrs. Eddy for payment for
"copying the manuscript of the book 'Science and Health,' and aiding in
the arrangement of capital letters and some of the grammatical
constructions." He produced some of Mrs. Eddy's manuscript in court, and
the judge allowed him more than the usual copyist's rate "on account of
the difficulty which a portion of the pages presented to the copyist by
reason of erasures and interlineations," as it is put in the judge's
finding.

Although Mrs. Eddy's book has been enlarged and greatly improved as to
its order and grammar, the first edition contains all the essential
elements of her philosophy, if such it may be called. Mr. Wiggin did
good work in translating the book into comparatively conventional
English, and gave a kind of unity to paragraphs and sentences, and later
revisers have greatly improved upon his work; but the first edition
gave a fairly complete and, on the whole, a comprehensible statement of
Mrs. Eddy's platform.

Mrs. Eddy's religion claims to be a system of metaphysics, a system of
therapeutics, and an improved form of Christianity. As the founder of a
system of idealistic philosophy, Mrs. Eddy does indeed, as Mr. Alfred
Farlow says, "begin where the sages of the world left off." Other
philosophers have reached the conclusion that we can have no absolute
knowledge of matter, since our evidence regarding it consists of sense
impressions, and that we can absolutely assert of matter only that it
exists in human consciousness; but Mrs. Eddy begins boldly with, "There
is no such thing as matter." She reaches her conclusion by steps which
she deems complete and logical:

1. God is All in all.
2. God is good. Good is Mind.
3. God, Spirit, being all, nothing is matter.

Mrs. Eddy calls attention to the fact that even if r