Editorial July 17, 1915 Issue

Who Am I?

John B. Willis

The queries, Who am I? What my nature? Whence? Where to? assault every human intelligence, and the consequent mental wonderment and turmoil puts a man in a class by himself. He is the only creature who is troubled about the things he does not yet know. Here he has no kin; he is quite unique and peculiar.

The attempted answers which men have given to these questions constitute the supreme contradiction of religious literature, and yet the statement that man is a contradiction by nature is an offense to one's highest intuition. However many make the colossal mistake of identifying selfhood with mortal consciousness, and however familiar we all may be with the rule of ignoble impulse, nevertheless the "Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde" concept of man's make-up is instinctively objected to by all nobility within. The sense of individuality and of indivisibility clasp hands in right consciousness, and the aversion to being broken up into unlike and opposing parts is both assertive and universal.

With respect to the nature of man it is both an interesting and an incongruous fact that, without intending it, theology has always stood for superficial sense rather than for spiritual intuition, and today man is being thus materialistically conceived and brought forth by the great body of religious believers. Thus the teaching of Christian Science, that God "the infinite Principle is reflected by . . . spiritual individuality" alone, and that "the material so-called senses have no cognizance of either Principle or its idea," as stated by Mrs. Eddy on page 258 of Science and Health, has broken in upon complacent religious sense as a startling if not threateningly destructive innovation. While we have been taught that men were to become a unity of goodness and truth in a future life, prevailing sense has denied the present possibility of the attainment of this ideal, and we have the ignorant self-depreciation of the average man, a stupid, uncourageous counterfeit of the humility of Moses when he said, "Who am I, that I should . . . bring forth the children of Israel."

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