Article July 2, 1932 Issue

The Mirage versus Knowledge

H. VICTORIA BURNESS

A man and his wife, accompanied by a boatman guide, or gillie, as he is called in the Highlands of Scotland, had been spending a day at a loch situated in the hills some five or six miles from a road. As the loch could be reached only by crossing a heather-covered moor over which there was no path, the little party was therefore entirely dependent on the gillie's knowledge of the surrounding country.

As they started to come home in the evening, the attention of one of them was suddenly arrested by the sight of a fine range of hills which had not been visible when they arrived at the loch some hours earlier. She immediately called the gillie's attention to the hills, asking in which county they lay and expressing surprise that they had not been seen in the morning. After looking steadily at them for a minute or two, the gillie said, "They are not there." Consternation seized this member of the party, as she felt that if the gillie was unable to see the hills, which were obviously near and on which she could distinctly discern clefts, watercourses, and other distinctive features, he could not possibly find his way over the pathless moor to the road. She repeated, "But you must see them; they are quite near." His answer was, "I see them, too, but if they were really there I should not know my way home—but they are not there." The other member of the party said to him, "You mean it is a mirage." He replied, "That may be the name, but they are not there." With that he proceeded to walk across the pathless moor. One member of the party, having seen a desert mirage, contentedly followed the gillie, but the other member was disturbed. Only when they had reached the road which would quickly take them back to their hotel did she realize the truth of the gillie's statement, "They are not there."

On page 14 of her Message to The Mother Church for 1901 Mrs. Eddy has said, "We regard evil as a lie, an illusion, therefore as unreal as a mirage that misleads the traveller on his way home." And in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 300) she has told us that "the mirage, which makes trees and cities seem to be where they are not, illustrates the illusion of material man, who cannot be the image of God."

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