SOME years ago electrical experts were puzzled to account for certain strange effects not explained by current knowledge. Most observers were content to call them freaks of the atmosphere. It was the peculiar quality of Marconi's genius that to him they seemed heralds of a long hidden law, which when understood would explain them and turn them to practical use. When he announced his theory, scholars smiled and newspapers derided the idea that men might hold aerial communication between continents. Years passed, and one day the same newspaper columns were ablaze with the praises of the new system which had saved hundreds of lives on an ocean liner. It had overcome prejudice by meeting human needs.
That wireless telegraphy startled the world even into ridicule of its claims, only shows how great a discovery it really proved to be. The wider the gap between the old notions and the new truth, the greater the advance achieved; and the shock of the shift of thought really measures the forward step. It is not surprising, therefore, that the statements of Christian Science, discovered by Mrs. Eddy, should likewise startle even the fair and friendly investigator.
A gentleman of culture and kindness of heart said recently that to him it seemed a "violent assumption to conclude that all effects are the product of mind, because some effects are known to be such." This comment is pertinent because it bears exactly upon what Mrs. Eddy has declared to be the central idea of her discovery, viz., "the scientific certainty that all causation is Mind, and every effect a mental phenomenon" (Retrospection and Introspection, p. 4). The gentleman's remark is interesting for the further reason that it illustrates certain characteristics of important discoveries in general, and the usual type of opposition to them. Discovery always deals with unknown or unsettled elements, and usually unsettles some data supposed to be well understood before. The phenomena which lead to the discovery are apt to be regarded as abnormal until the discovery so relates such facts to others as to make them all illustrations of a larger law. instead of leaving some of them as exceptions to the admitted order.
