Communications
COMMUNICATIONS MRS. EDDY'S BIOGRAPHY New York, N. Y. TO the Editor:-In your issue of January 15, there appeared a letter from Mr. Orwell Bradley Towne, publicity man for the Christian Science...
...Towne denied, for instance, that the Christian Science Church as an organization has engaged in a boycott against any publishers, or in a campaign of suppression against any book...
...Powell's list of neo-pagans, which includes H. L. Mencken, "a Bernard Shaw, a George," and "Bertrand Russell...
...But Mr...
...Reasonable and decent-that describes them exactly...
...FRANCO-AMERICAN UNDERSTANDING Louisville, Ky...
...May I point out to you that Charles Scribner's Sons, publishers of my biography of Mrs...
...He insisted that all such activities (if any) were engineered by individual members of the Christian Science Church...
...he does not believe that words "mean" anything...
...The neo-pagan looks like the old scratch, his master, which is to say he is protean...
...One more point...
...It was finally settled by the French government refusing to allow this synthetic wine to be sold at home- but, it could be exported...
...he is a marvelous user of words...
...And as for knowledge, ignorance is the one thing which your true up-to-date pagan will have nothing else but...
...NEO-PAGANISM Rome, Italy...
...he follows Spinoza in proclaiming that God alone exists...
...Powell goes on to glean "that the new pagan, a knowledgeable chap . . . is a jolly indecent fellow," he gleans neither so wisely nor so well...
...For the keystone of his philosophy is that there should be nothing to interfere with the spontaneous reaction of the individual to stimuli, and it is notorious that information-more especially information which is reliable and pondered upon- interferes with these reactions, so that many an incest and murder and other artistic bit of self-expression becomes sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, and loses the name of action...
...he protests that nothing should interfere with his will and his rights to do as he pleases...
...Because that, when they knew God (from the creation of the world...
...Like the perfect Christian, he is merely an ideal...
...As a matter of fact, Mr...
...Powell objects that this picture is inconsistent with itself he should remember that the neo-pagan has lifted inconsistency above the graces, above the virtues, and made it the prime article of his creed...
...The neo-pagan is almost invariably a monist...
...he calls all opposing arguments "merely verbal...
...No less a publication than Plain Talk has come forward with the editorial pronouncement that the Federal Trade Commission should investigate the activities of the Christian Science Church as constituting a conspiracy in restraint of trade...
...he is a solipsist, who believes that he himself alone exists...
...TO the Editor:-In The Commonweal of January 22, I read an article on Franco-American Understanding...
...The possibility of such private and public action has evidently just come home to Mr...
...Orwell Bradley Towne, publicity man for the Christian Science Church in New York, taking issue with an article by Michael Williams which recently appeared in your columns...
...What could be less jolly than dutiful concupiscence, pursued as a theory...
...He should look underfoot...
...Presumably the officials of his church have suddenly sensed the obvious fact that in pursuing their policy of engineering concerted action against Scribner's and myself, they were laying themselves open to very serious charges of conspiracy, and paving the way for a suit for large damages...
...Clutier, la...
...Two churches in Kansas City, for instance, wrote to Scribner's on their official stationery, directly threatening boycott if publication of my book were continued, and quoting, as their authority, their Church Manual which authorizes such a boycott against any publishing agency disobeying the Christian Science mandates...
...Towne almost identical with the one you received from him in turn: "Mr...
...HARVEY WICKHAM...
...he does not believe in free will...
...The obvious answer is that the Committees perform the same sort of duties for their church which are performed by publicity men for big business corporations...
...And as: (Wisdom 13, 1.) "all men are vain, in whom there is not the knowledge of God, and who have not acknowledged Who was the Workman," no matter how decent they may seem to their fellow-men, "they are not to be pardoned" for their neglect of God...
...No one can deny that the neo-pagans resemble this picture of their ancient counterparts...
...As the New Republic recently said editorially, in answer to a letter from Mr...
...Sir Bertrand certainly comes nearest to the mark, yet not even he has succeeded in worming all traces of God's finger out of him...
...Therefore I hesitate to repeat Mr...
...he is an atheist who says that there is no God...
...And as to some of the others-surely, Mr...
...REV...
...But the right of protest-nay, the duty to protest if facts have been misstated-has nothing to do with the right to browbeat, to threaten, to conspire, to decree what the general public shall or shall not be permitted to read...
...GEORGE ALEXANDER...
...But what he is really trying to get at is what he calls "sexual freedom," by which he means the right to disregard whatever consequences his own momentary pleasure may have upon others, or even upon himself at some future time-and this not because his own passions are violent but because they are so weak that he fears they will, in the face of any restraint sufficient to act otherwise than as an excitant, fail of all manifestations whatsoever...
...Nor is this all...
...This is good gleaning, though one need hardly sit up nights to worry over the ignorance of an Aristotle, an Aeschylus or a Confucius, since these worthies were all rather noted for knowing everything which they had a chance to know...
...But not even the Powell gleaning may hope to discover the perfect neo-pagan...
...he denies the right of other people to do anything whatever if it does not please him...
...Towne and his officials, and well explains their frantic denials that as a church the Christian Science organization has taken any restraining or threatening action against Scribner's or retail book-deale'rsNo one would gtfant the Christian Scientists the right to "protest" against fdisrepresentation any more freely than I. The right of free speech is a basic one which I would be the first to defend, I would indeed go further than granting this right, and actually urge the Christian Scientists, if they really believe what they say about my book, to produce the evidence vehich will prove it based on falsehoods...
...he is grossly sentimental in regard to anything which is condemned by human experience and the collective wisdom of the race...
...Permit me to act the part of the "kindly soul" in question, more especially as Mr...
...If Mr...
...TO the Editor:-Mr...
...This caused so much trouble in the grape-growing districts that large bodies of soldiers had to be used to quell the riots...
...In their own attitude toward this entire matter the editors of The Commonweal have most evidently been in general agreement with many other eminent commentators...
...Powell himself describes as the "Catholico-Puritan group...
...he is a mechanist...
...The godless school is proof enough of this...
...he revels in the heresy of absolute immanence...
...He left not Himself without testimony, doing good from heaven, giving rains and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness) they have not glorified Him as God, or given thanks...
...he denies the validity of logic, and the words dialectic and common sense are to him as a red rag to a bull...
...But this would include even Catholics-save, perhaps, these that Mr...
...From book-dealers all over the country Scribner's have received letters describing the threats made by official committees of the local Christian Science churches who visited these dealers and sought to dissuade them from handling, displaying, or selling my work...
...Wisdom 13, 8.) Anyone who reads The Commonweal may see that it strives to make people think of God, to bring Him back into the life of the nation, and hence combats neo-paganism which leaves God out of His world, ignores Him...
...Towne, declared in its February issue: "We can view Mr...
...Towne denies that the Committees on Publication of bis church constitute a propaganda organization...
...EDWIN FRANDEN DAKIN...
...he does not believe in original sin...
...Towne's word) the result is the same...
...Indecent the neo-pagan often is, for carnality (in the word, since he often in the flesh is weak) he assumes as a matter of obligation...
...For the old paganism contained within it all that was best in the world of its time, and the best in the world of today is precisely what the new paganism leaves out...
...Why shudder at our hypocrisy...
...Powell is wrong when he says that he does not think "The Commonweal is as much exercised over the ghostly shadow cast by the modern pagans as it was during the swaddling-clothes stage of its career...
...Saint Paul in his epistle to the Romans tells us what was the sins of the old pagan: "So that they are inexcusable...
...Towne's present denials of "official" boycott evidently mean only one thing...
...I quote one sentence: "France hears of bootleggers, synthetic gin and whisky, poisoned alcohol, and shudders at our hypocrisy...
...Towne certainly will not pretend that these various spokesmen for his church are so incompetent that one and all, in conversation or in writing, they give the impression that they are acting officially when in fact they are doing so as private individuals...
...he sings songs to "life" and to "nature...
...But to say that, in so far as he is truly neo-pagan, he is either knowledgeable or jolly is to do him a gross injustice...
...If Mr...
...He who helps men know their need of God, works for their welfare...
...Towne's pronouncement as "propaganda...
...THOMAS VOPATEK...
...He gleans, he says, "that the old 'paganus' . . . was a decent fellow, ignorant, perhaps, an Aristotle, an Aeschylus, a Confucius, but still a reasonably decent fellow...
...Powell is confusing the neo-pagan with the neo-protestant, the protester against the narrow restraints of Puritanism...
...he denies that anybody exists except as the sum of his environment brought to a focus...
...Powell confesses that he, too, may "become upset over the neo-pagan on the horizon if someone" will only inform him what the neo-pagan looks like...
...Powell does not begin to recognize the neo-pagan now, I hope he will attend to the following particulars...
...he believes that there is nothing to a man but his environment...
...Towne's demand in no other light than as a press agent's attempt to force his organization's propaganda into our editorial columns under the guise of righteous indignation...
...Donald Powell, in your issue for January I, promises to be the "attentive auditor" if only "some kindly soul" will tell him why he should be "frightened over the bogy of neo-paganism...
...The distinguished pages of the Forum agree with those of the eminent Commonweal in classifying Mr...
...TO the Editor:-What does a neo-pagan look like...
...But when Mr...
...Outside of lunatic asylums, the best life can offer is an occasional egomaniacs run amuck...
...asks Donald Powell...
...That which lingers upon the horizon, rosy with the sunset of the distant past, is the old pagan, glorious with mighty deeds, who resembles the new pagan no more than Offenbach resembles John Sebastian...
...he thinks that man "fell" when he became civilized...
...As Plato has written: "No state governed by mortals which ignores God has yet escaped misfortune and trouble...
...he deifies instinct...
...he holds that the cause of anything is the process of its occurrence...
...Towne's denial...
...Possibly you have never heard of the synthetic wine made in France out of sugar, yeast and water, colored and flavored to imitate any wine...
...Perhaps these are "on the horizon...
...and whether one classifies their enunciations as publicity, as propaganda, or as "information" (to use Mr...
...But I do hope Mr...
...Powell's difficulty, if he will permit me to suggest that he has a difficulty, arises from his curious failure to attach sufficient significance to that little prefix, "neo...
...Powell makes a mistake in looking for him on the horizon...
...Hence their recent haste to assert that the attempts to suppress my work have all been made by "individuals," and to deny that the church officials played a part in inspiring this program...
...It can be done in two words...
...The Forum, in refusing to print some of the material so insistently forwarded by Mr...
...he denies causation...
...Towne, who has lately been taking issue constantly with a great many editors, because of what they wrote and published concerning the remarkable activities of the Christian Science Church, made some misstate-ments which need to be corrected...
...Eddy, have a great deal of written evidence directly refuting Mr...
...he makes an especial attack upon dogma, tradition, authority, discipline, self-control...
Vol. 11 • February 1930 • No. 15
