sense
testimony, nor a continuous hemorrhage be recorded, or its cessation
known without sense testimony, nor can epilepsy be diagnosed, nor
bilious attacks recognized without sense testimony. On page 606 a
grateful disciple bears witness to the healing of a broken arm,
testimony to said healing being demonstrated by a visit to a physician's
office "where they were experimenting with an X-ray machine. The doctor
pointed out the place as being slightly thicker at that part, like a
piece of steel that had been welded." In other words, Christian Science
cannot make out its case without the recognition of the veracity of a
sense testimony, whose truth its philosophy denies.

Mrs. Eddy seems to dismiss all this in one brief paragraph. "Is a man
sick if the material senses indicate that he is in good health? No, for
matter can make no conditions for man. And is he well if the senses say
he is sick? Yes, he is well in Science, in which health is normal and
disease is abnormal."[41] If Mrs. Eddy and her followers believe so
specious a statement as that, to set them free from an inconsistency
which is central in their whole contention, they are welcome to their
belief, but the inconsistency still remains. You can go far by using
words in a Pickwickian sense but there is a limit. A consistent idealism
is philosophically possible, but it must be a far more inclusive and
deeply reasoned idealism than Christian Science. The most thoroughgoing
idealisms have accepted the testimony of the senses as a part of the
necessary conduct of life as now conditioned. Anything else would reduce
us to unspeakable confusion, empty experience of its content, dissolve
all the contacts of life and halt us in our tracks for we cannot take a
step safely without the testimony of the senses and any scheme of things
which seeks to distinguish between the varying validities of sense
testimony, accepting only the evidence of the senses for health and
well-being and denying the dependability of whatever else they register,
is simply an immense caprice which breaks down under any examination.

[Footnote 41: Page 120. It is only fair to say that Mrs. Eddy is
hampered by her own want of clear statement. The phrase (so often used
in "Science and Health") "in Science" is probably in her mind equivalent
to "in the ideal order" and if Mrs. Eddy had clearly seen and clearly
stated what she is groping for: that the whole shadowed side of life
belongs to our present