Article November 29, 1919 Issue

The remarks on Christian Science contributed by a physician...

Aaron E. Brandt

Mahoney City (Pa.) Record

The remarks on Christian Science contributed by a physician and appearing in a recent issue, exhibit such a spirit of tolerance, and such an evident desire to be fair, that they merit my sincere respect, even though I cannot agree with all his conclusions.

There is one statement made therein to which I desire permission to reply briefly, namely, that "man is no more all mind than he is all matter." Now while it may be the commonly accepted view that man is partly mind and partly matter, no one I believe has yet been found who has undertaken to say which particular portion or what percentage of him is mind and which matter. The chemists usually state that the human body is composed largely of water and the remainder consists of inorganic salts, leaving the mental phase of the problem out of the calculation entirely. But all chemists do not stop there, for we have no less an authority than Wilhelm Oswald, formerly Professor of Chemistry in the University of Leipsic, for the statement that "matter is a thing of thought." Another eminent authority, Professor Fiske, is responsible for the following: "All the qualities of matter are what the mind makes them, and have no existence as such apart from the mind." Plato, Abelard, Berkeley, Sir Oliver Lodge, and other great thinkers have declared that the starting point of matter is not material but mental. Herbert Spencer, whose standing as a philosopher and scientist is among the highest, stated his conviction and conclusion that even the so-called vitality of the human body, equally with other sense phenomena, is part and parcel of one and the same thing called energy.

Now in view of such opinions to the effect that all matter is of mental origin, and must therefore be of a mental nature, it ought to be of interest to anyone who has the great problem of human welfare at heart to note how the statements from such high sources compare with the teaching of Mrs. Eddy, the revered Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science. On page 177 of Science and Health we find the following: "Mortal mind and body are one. Neither exists without the other, and both must be destroyed by immortal Mind. Matter, or body is but a false concept of mortal mind. This so-called mind builds its own superstructure, of which the material body is the grosser portion; but from first to last, the body is a sensuous, human concept."

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