Article May 25, 1918 Issue

If the human body could speak, it would doubtless agree...

The Christian Science Monitor

If the human body could speak, it would doubtless agree with the psalmist when he says: "False witnesses did rise up; they laid to my charge things that I knew not." Mrs. Eddy states the case of the false witnesses in another way when she says in Science and Health (p. 308): "This awful demand, 'Adam, where art thou?' is met by the admission from the head, heart, stomach, blood, nerves, etc.: 'Lo, here I am, looking for happiness and life in the body, but finding only an illusion, a blending of false claims, false pleasure, pain, sin, sickness, and death.'"

The question, What controls the body? is perennially turning mortal reasoning and human philosophy awry. Among the men who are said to be professionally qualified to understand what it is that controls the human body, this question is usually answered by the words, "Brain and nerves." This answer reminds one of the ancient myth in which the god Atlas is seen supporting the earth upon his back. When, however, that simple question is asked, What supports Atlas? we have suddenly reached the end of human fiction. Just so the question, What causes brain and nerves to act (if they act at all)? has a similar effect; for we have reached our starting point, having completed the circle of human limitations.

Plainly, then, the answer to the question, What governs the body? is not to be found in the body itself. We must look outside the body if we want to learn anything of value concerning its government. A very minute description of a trolley car, for instance, would hardly be called a definition of or a treatise on power. Yet the minute description of the anatomy and physiology of the human body has been held before the public so long that mankind have actually come to believe that the body contains within itself the issues of health and disease, life and death. It is no wonder, therefore, that the body seems to be the master instead of the servant of mankind, which is about as sensible as it would be for the trolley car to claim that it is the master of the power that moves it.

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