Those who are likely to decry this proviso are always those who tell us only of the successes of mental or "spiritual" healing, but not of its failures. The comparative figures of the two sets of results are tremendously disproportionate. To open one's eyes to the flaunted successes of this system and to shut them to its aching failures, is not the way to understand it aright. To exaggerate what it has achieved and to minimize or deny what it has been unable to achieve--as is done by its ardent partisans--represents a falling away from intellectual integrity. To take a typical example, consider the famous healing sanctuary at Lourdes, France. It was established in 1860. During recent years the attendance of sick and crippled patients has been no less than six hundred thousand annually. Yet during the first seventy years of the sanctuary's existence, a total of only five thousand cures was reported. This should represent, on a conservative estimate, about one percent of successful treatments. The number of those pilgrim-patients who failed to benefit must therefore run into millions! We dwell on this example not to decry Lourdes, which is doing a blessed and benign work which everyone should respect, and certainly not to derogate its religious aspect, but to point out that the failures in every school of healing, whether materialistic, mental, or religious, must exist. That the inspiration which brought Lourdes into being was truly divine and that the most amazing cures have been achieved there in a manner only to be described as miraculous, we fully accept. But that there are limitations and disappointments inherently present in this kind of healing must also be accepted.
-- Notebooks Category 10: Healing of the Self > Chapter 5 : The Healing Power of The Overself > # 36
