Article January 1, 1916 Issue

I would be glad to have space in which to comment on the...

Thorwald Siegfried

The Tacoma (Wash.) Tribune

I would be glad to have space in which to comment on the letter of a writer who objects to an article on the subject of education which appeared in The Christian Science Monitor.

The writer of the letter, admitting a twenty years' study of hypnotism and suggestion, and commending them, makes it clear that she is in favor of systems of education which are hypnotic and suggestive. To this partiality she has a right, if she desires it. On the other hand, the objection of Christian Scientists is not to the form or name of any system of education, but to its content and method, if these involve the mesmeric control of the child's personality by his teachers. The fact is that the practice of Christian Science is entirely opposed, in design and method, to hypnotism and mental suggestion; and a study of Christian Science quite naturally leads the student of it into opposition to any proposal which would or might interfere with the right of him or of his children to be governed by that Mind which is God, and to be free from the government of any so-called human mind.

The belief that suggestion can be used for constructive purposes, as expressed in the letter, is one of the errors that occasionally leads a person to rely on it for aid. Advocates of suggestion generally admit that evil is suggested quite as readily as good, to one who subjects himself to its so-called power, and that is sufficient proof to a student of metaphysics that any seeming good attained through suggestion is really evil and but temporarily deceives one into the belief that it is good. If suggestion could ever bring any perfectly good thing to man it would be incapable of becoming the instrument of evil. Good and evil are contraries, and do not mix in their causes or results in human affairs or in the manner of their becoming apparent to human thought.

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