STRIKING examples of the modern proverb which says that it is better for a man to sound his own praises than to let them remain unsounded, are to be found in many of the criticisms of Christian Science which have appeared in newspapers and magazines, and the complacency with which the critics announce themselves as "thoughtful persons," or persons capable of "viewing the situation broadly" is somewhat amazing, since a becoming sense of modesty should prompt them to allow their readers to pass judgment upon such delicate and personal questions.
If a writer possesses superior merit as a thinker this will be manifest to his readers, and whether he has considered his subject from the standpoint of a "thoughtful person" and viewed the situation broadly will appear from the care with which he has sought out the evidence pro and con, and weighed it, rather than from any self-assertion of superior intellectual capacity.
A recent case of this self -arrogated superiority is that of a professor of psychology who, in a magazine article, passes contemptuous judgment upon Christian Science and Christian Scientists, and yet who displays such lamentable ignorance of the evidence pertaining to his subject as to assert that "in all diseases caused by bacilli, such as typhoid, small-pox, cholera, and bubonic plague; in all cases of fracture and in all cases of traumatic lesion, the efficacy of mental factors in the process of recovery is wholly secondary and all but negligible. Moreover, in such diseases as cancer there is not a scintilla of really reliable evidence to show the slightest recuperative effects from mental sources."
