Article January 24, 1914 Issue

Mental Unity

GEORGE H. MOORE

All learning, every school, every propaganda, every honest attempt to convince others, is directed, whether consciously or not, to this end,—that men may agree in their thought of what is true, may think alike about the fundamentals of life, and thereby act in accord. This is the ultimate goal of education. The misdirection of much of this effort is apparent from its failure. Increase of education often results, not in unity and simplicity, but in greater antagonism, multiplicity, and confusion of schools and of creeds. Human opinion is fairly kaleidoscopic in its constant shifting and regrouping, and yet the vision of a unified race, working in concord toward a common hope, continues to beckon human thought into ever new fields of faith and adventure.

Many high ideals promulgated in the past have failed of acceptance because they were conceived on a basis of compromise or mere conjecture, because they were restricted by the too narrow vision of their promoters, never reached beyond the merely provincial or parochial in their designs, and had no demonstrable relation whatever to the clamorous needs of the present. The teachings of Christian Science have injected an entirely new spirit into our search for reality, in that they declare divine Mind to be the most insistent fact of creation, demonstrable by the individual here and now, quite regardless of the contracted vision or purpose of his fellows. To this end, Christian Science discards as irrelevant and deceptive the long unfolding of speculative opinion, which has so busied the race in weighing and judging thought values without any fixed standard by which to test their validity, and which affords only glimpses of reality, but in no degree enters into or gages its scope and power. Christian Science impels men directly and unequivocally toward realization of the one Mind, not by a process of trimming and pruning, evolution or compromise, but by an absolute change of mental base, putting off the counterfeit man of material sense with all his history, as in no degree handicapping the present or robbing the future. It directs thought wholly to a disclosure of the real man of spiritual image and estate.

The task which the Christian Scientist sets himself is identical with that about which the world has busied itself so long and fruitlessly. His great advantage rests in his cognizance of the fact that Mrs. Eddy's spiritual researches enabled her to unify and define humanity's problem and to exemplify a direct method of solution. Like the leaven "hid in three measures of meal," the teachings of Christian Science are permeating the thoughts and purposes of men, bringing science, theology, medicine, and every other avenue of human research, to one definite task,—mentally to dissociate mankind from false heredity, environment, and hope, and to restore their thought and destiny to its original divine estate.

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