The House of Defence v. 1

  DEDICATION

  TO

  C. E. M.

  MY DEAR FRIEND,

  It is with your permission that I dedicate this book to you, and withyour permission and by your desire that I explain the circumstances ofits dedication. You were cured, as both you and I know, of a diseasethat medical science had pronounced incurable by a certain ChristianScience healer, who used neither knife nor drugs upon you.

  I, a layman in medical affairs, think, as you know, that your diseasewas nervous in origin, and you will readily admit that the wise andskilful man who figures here as Sir James thought the same. But it wasalready organic when you went to him, and, after consultation withothers, he pronounced it incurable. At the same time, he acknowledgedits nervous origin, and you will acknowledge that with the utmostfrankness he confessed entire inability to say _how_ a nervous affectionentered the more obviously material world of organic trouble. He hadinstances in plenty: fear, anxiety, he said, affected circulation anddigestion, and that, of course, is patent to everybody. So, too, is thecure: remove the anxiety or fear, and you will get gastric affairs to gosmoothly again, _unless_ organic trouble has begun.

  I suppose it is because we are all so used to that sort of mentalhealing (do not contradict me yet) that we no longer see any mysteryattaching to it. But in such a cure there is no doubt whatever that themind acts on the body, even as it acted before, when fear produced theimperfect action of the digestion, and heals just as it hurt. To go astep farther, I see no reason why the mind should not heal the diseaseof drinking or drug-taking, for in these, too, it is the brain that isthe seat of the trouble, and its disease and desire is the real cause ofthe damage done to bodily tissue. But when--still logically, though in ascale that swiftly ascends--you tell me that some power not surgical canheal a compound fracture, then I must part company. At least, I do notbelieve that any man living upon this earth can make it happen thatbones that are broken should join together (especially when the fractureis compound and they stick out of the skin) without assisting Nature bywhat you call "mere manipulation," but by what I call, "setting thebone."

  It is here we join issue.

  We have often discussed these points before, and the discussion has everended in laughter. But the discussion ends this time in the book which Ihave written.

  You have read these pages, and you know that in some points you seem tome to be very like Alice Yardly, but those are the points on which weagree to differ. I think Alice Yardly and you are often too silly forwords. But you are much more essentially like Bertie Cochrane, and it isto you, in the character of him, that I dedicate this book. You, sickwith a mortal disease, found healing in Christian Science, and in itfound happiness. And now you yourself heal by the power that healed you.For I hope I shall never forget that which I with my own eyes saw youdo--that which is the foundation of the last scene of the healing in"The House of Defence." To save that drug-logged wreck, who was ourfriend, when you saw no other way of convincing him of the beastlinessof his habit, you drank that which by all that is known of the drugshould have killed you, and you drank it with complete and absoluteconfidence that it could not possibly hurt you. It is true--at least,Sir James tells me so--that it is not quite easy to poison oneself withlaudanum, because the amateur will usually take too much, and be sick,or too little, and thus not imbibe a fatal dose. But you drank a gooddeal--I can see now the brown stuff falling in your glass--and itappeared to have no effect whatever on you. I will go further: it had noeffect whatever on you. But it had the effect you foresaw on yourpatient: it cured him.

  Now, again and again I ask myself, how did it cure him? He was very fondof you; he saw you, in the desire to save him, apparently lay down yourlife for him. I believe that his brain, his will-power, received then sotremendous and bracing a shock that laudanum for that moment became tohim a thing abhorrent and devilish, as no doubt it is. The sight of youswallowing the deadly thing gave a huge stimulus to his will. That seemsto me not only possible, but natural. Only, if this is the case, it wasagain his own mind, on which your action acted, that healed him.

  That, however, does not explain why the drug had no effect on you. Thereagain we part company. I believe it to have been your absoluteconfidence that it could not hurt you that left you unharmed andunaffected. You said, with a faith that to me is transcendent, "Thisthing shall not hurt me, because it is necessary for me to drink it."And your body obeyed the orders of your mind, and was not harmed. Butyou will have none of that explanation. You say it could not harm you,because there is neither healing nor hurt in material things.... Andhere we are again!

  Let me cease to argue with you. Let me only say that to me that eveningwas an epoch. I have seen and heard of cheerful and serene heroismbefore, but it never before came so close to me as then, when the stormbugled outside, and the fire spluttered, and you drank your deadlyglass.

  Affectionately yours,

  E. F. BENSON.