Article September 1, 1917 Issue

Mortal Mind and Human Mind

FREDERICK DIXON

In the effort to grasp the full significance of Christian Science, there is nothing more necessary to keep steadfastly in view than the unreality of mortal mind and all its accompanying phenomena. What exactly Mrs. Eddy meant by mortal mind she has explained, with her usual unrivaled terseness and clarity, in a single line on page 25 of "Retrospection and Introspection," in the words, "That which sins, suffers, and dies, I named mortal mind," while on page 9 of "Unity of Good" she makes equally clear the absolute necessity for never being betrayed into any admission, mental or verbal, of the reality of mortal mind, when she asks, "What is the cardinal point of the difference in my metaphysical system?" and immediately answers her own question as follows: "This: that by knowing the unreality of disease, sin, and death, you demonstrate the allness of God. This difference wholly separates my system from all others."

Mortal mind, then, and human mind are equally and absolutely unreal. They are the illusion which counterfeits God, or Principle, and they possess not one single particle of good, for they are the negation of good. The idea that the human mind is a sort of mortal mind and water, cannot find one line of support in Mrs. Eddy's writings. Human mind is simply mortal mind expressed humanly. The struggle of the human being for salvation is, consequently, the effort to put off the illusion of the carnal mind,—that is, the mortal mind incarnated or expressed in the flesh, for the word carnal is derived simply from the Latin carnis, meaning flesh,—and to put on the Mind of Christ. Now this divine Mind, or Mind which was in Christ Jesus, is infinite, since God is infinite. Therefore, when the mortal or human mind is put off, and the Mind of Christ or divine Mind is put on, nothing has been changed and nothing has been created, for the divine Mind being infinite has been there all the time. What has seemed to happen is merely that the illusion of the human senses has passed away into its native nothingness. If the human mind had passed into divine Mind, as is sometimes erroneously imagined, evil in some mysterious way would have become good, and so actually eternal.

Precisely the same dilemma of course arises when the effort is made to explain human mind as a not quite so bad mortal mind. The attempt ends inevitably in an endeavor to whitewash mortal mind. Then this whitewashed mortal mind is gradually diluted until it becomes divine Mind. Thus, instead of the "scientific translation of mortal mind," described by Mrs. Eddy on pages 115 and 116 of Science and Health, in which the unreality of evil ceases to deceive, so that the reality of good becomes spiritually understood, a sort of crazy genealogical table is set us, to the effect that mortal mind begat human mind, and human mind begat divine Mind, who is called God.

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