dullest head in the world is worth the same as the opinion of the brightest head in the world—­a brass farthing.  How do we arrive at this?  It is simple:  The affirmative opinion of a stupid man is neutralised by the negative opinion of his stupid neighbour—­no decision is reached; the affirmative opinion of the intellectual giant Gladstone is neutralised by the negative opinion of the intellectual giant Cardinal Newman—­no decision is reached.  Opinions that prove nothing are, of course, without value—­any but a dead person knows that much.  This obliges us to admit the truth of the unpalatable proposition just mentioned above—­that in disputed matters political and religious one man’s opinion is worth no more than his peer’s, and hence it follows that no man’s opinion possesses any real value.  It is a humbling thought, but there is no way to get around it:  all opinions upon these great subjects are brass-farthing opinions.

It is a mere plain simple fact—­as clear and as certain as that 8 and 7 make fifteen.  And by it we recognise that we are all insane, as concerns those matters.  If we were sane we should all see a political or religious doctrine alike, there would be no dispute:  it would be a case of 8 and 7—­just as it is in heaven, where all are sane and none insane.  There there is but one religion, one belief, the harmony is perfect, there is never a discordant note.

Under protection of these preliminaries I suppose I may now repeat without offence that the Christian Scientist is insane.  I mean him no discourtesy, and I am not charging—­nor even imagining—­that he is insaner than the rest of the human race.  I think he is more picturesquely insane that some of us.  At the same time, I am quite sure that in one important and splendid particular he is saner than is the vast bulk of the race.

Why is he insane?  I told you before:  it is because his opinions are not ours.  I know of no other reason, and I do not need any other; it is the only way we have of discovering insanity when it is not violent.  It is merely the picturesqueness of his insanity that makes it more interesting than my kind or yours.  For instance, consider his ’little book’—­the one described in the previous article; the ‘little book’ exposed in the sky eighteen centuries ago by the flaming angel of the Apocalypse and handed down in our day to Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy of New Hampshire and translated by her, word for word, into English (with help of a polisher), and now published and distributed in hundreds of editions by her at a clear profit per volume, above cost, of 700 per cent.!—­a profit which distinctly belongs to the angel of the Apocalypse, and let him collect it if he can; a ‘little book’ which the C.S. very frequently calls by just that name, and always inclosed in quotation-marks to keep its high origin exultantly in mind; a ‘little book’ which ‘explains’ and reconstructs and new-paints and decorates the Bible and puts a mansard roof on it and a lightning-rod and all the other modern improvements; a little book which for the present affects to travel in yoke with the Bible and be friendly to it, and within half a century will hitch it in the rear, and thenceforth travel tandem, itself in the lead, in the coming great march of Christian Scientism through the Protestant dominions of the planet.