find out for good and all whether the fatal casualty happened to the
dead man--as the paragraph almost asserts--or to some person or persons
not even hinted at in the paragraph, the Supreme Court would be obliged
to say that the evidence established nothing with certainty except that
there had been a casualty--victim not known.

The context thinks it explains who the victim was, but it does nothing
of the kind. It furnishes some guessing-material of a sort which enables
you to infer that it was "we" that suffered the mentioned injury, but if
you should carry the language to a court you would not be able to prove
that it necessarily meant that. "We" are Mrs. Eddy; a funny little
affectation. She replaced it later with the more dignified third person.

The quoted paragraph is from Mrs. Eddy's preface to the first revision
of Science and Health (1883). Sixty-four pages further along--in the
body of the book (the elephant-range), she went out with that same
flint-lock and got this following result. Its English is very nearly
as straight and clean and competent as is the English of the latest
revision of Science and Health after the gun has been improved from
smooth-bore musket up to globe-sighted, long distance rifle:

"Man controlled by his Maker has no physical suffering. His body is
harmonious, his days are multiplying instead of diminishing, he is
journeying towards Life instead of death, and bringing out the new man
and crucifying the old affections, cutting them off in every material
direction until he learns the utter supremacy of Spirit and yields
obedience thereto."

In the latest revision of Science and Health (1902), the perfected
gun furnishes the following. The English is clean, compact, dignified,
almost perfect. But it is observable that it is not prominently better
than it is in the above paragraph, which was a product of the primitive
flint-lock:

"How unreasonable is the belief that we are wearing out life and
hastening to death, and at the same time we are communing with
immortality? If the departed are in rapport with mortality, or matter,
they are not spiritual, but must still be mortal, sinful, suffering,
and dying. Then wherefore look to them--even were communication
possible--for proofs of immortality and accept them as oracles?"
--Edition of 1902, page 78.

With the above paragraphs compare these that follow. It is Mrs. Eddy
writing--after a good long twenty years of pen-practice. Compare also