Article November 17, 1917 Issue

Peace and materiality are antithetical

The Christian Science Monitor

Peace and materiality are antithetical. To suppose that peace can be found in matter is to mistake the very nature of the latter. Peace, it is obvious, is an abstract mental condition. Matter is either a subjective condition of the human mind or the expression of some force or energy existing independently of that mind. Indeed, according to the theory of pure materialism, mind is something existing in and dependent on matter. In any case, then, if one or another of the conflicting explanations of human philosophy is to be accepted, a man's peace of mind is at the mercy of matter. For, even if the teaching of the idealist is accepted, a material or mortal mind, which weaves the flux of matter, has itself woven a condition of struggle in which peace is inconceivable.

In order to find peace it is, consequently, obvious that the human mind must escape from itself. In other words, the individual must cease to be carnally minded, and must instead find refuge in the Mind of Christ, that condition of spiritual-mindedness which is not merely the very antithesis of carnal-mindedness, but which is realizable only as the human or mortal mind, with its pictures of matter or inharmony, gives place to the manifestation of the eternal, divine Mind, the existence of which has been obscured by the supposititious material mist which is the inevitable atmosphere of this human or mortal mind whose subjective condition is matter.

Now matter, as has been said, is a condition of struggle. The very claim of the natural scientist, on which he bases his theory of the indestructibility of matter, demands this. Roughly it comes to this: that matter is a condition of flux, energy if you like, in which everything superficially appears to perish, but in reality enters upon a new lease of existence in accordance with the law of conservation. There is nothing particularly new in this. The Chinese Taoist, Tzu Li, illustrated it in discussing the future of his friend, Tzu Lai: "Verily, God is great! I wonder what he will make of you. Do you think he will make you into a rat's liver or into the shoulders of a snake?" Twenty-three centuries later Shakespeare suggested that the future of Cæsar might be found in a brick. But whether you adopt the theory of Chuang Tzu, Shakespeare, or Thomas Huxley, you arrive by one devious course or another at some so-called law of struggle which sooner or later, sooner generally rather than later, places the neck of man under the yoke of inharmony.

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