● ● ● discoveries in the heavens and the earth, as seemed to be beyond the reach of man. But may there not be Sir Isaac Newtons in every science? . . . Think with yourself, with how much ease the God of spirits can cast into your mind, some useful suggestion . . . whence you may derive unspeakable light and satisfaction in a matter, that has long puzzled and entangled you.89
But Watts insisted on the need for both revelation and reason. It was a fault to try to determine any question by natural reason alone when help might be derived from revelation. On the other hand, it was a “culpable partiality” to examine some doubtful or pretended revelation without the use of reason. Although the Christian gospel might safely be taken as a divine, infallible, and proven revelation, it would be well to remember that “we are but fallible interpreters” and we may well discover “a fairer light cast over the same scriptures, and see reason to alter our sentiments even in some point of moment.”90
Here was an open invitation to make new discoveries in the Christian revelation, although Mary Baker was not yet ready to accept the invitation.91 While her mind was rational and inquiring, it was not speculative. As a woman and as an American, she was eminently practical, and it would be practical need and circumstance that would call forth her own discoveries. Whately, Watts, and the other writers she was studying were providing her with useful tools of thought, but she was not drawn to the study of philosophy as such. Though familiar with Locke, she apparently knew nothing of Berkeley.92 When she finally came to a conviction of the unreality of matter, it was by a quite different route from that of the good bishop, who crowned his philosophical achievements with a panegyric on the salubrious properties of tar water.93
89 [Watts, The Improvement of the Mind, pp. 6, 14–15, 27.]
90 [Watts, The Improvement of the Mind, pp. 288, 309.]
91 See also passage quoted from Whately on pp. 183–184.
92 Mary Baker Eddy, “Biography,” c. 1903, p. 1, A10219, MBEL. Her acquaintance with Locke’s distinction between primary and secondary qualities—and her rejection of the distinction—is evidenced in a statement in Science and Health: “From the infinite elements of the one Mind emanate all form, color, quality, and quantity, and these are mental, both primarily and secondarily” (p. 512).
93 See Les Deux Chemins and Le Pouvoir de l’Esprit by a contemporary French mathematician, W. Rivier, for an interesting attempt to carry Berkeley’s reasoning beyond the mental nature of matter to the mental nature of the space-time of relativity physics, with a side glance at Mrs. Eddy. W. Rivier, Les Deux Chemins: Nouveaux Entretiens de Hylas et de Philonoüs (Brussels: Les Éditions du Temple, 1951); Le Pouvoir de l’Esprit (Neuchâtel: Éditions du Griffon, 1957).