Article October 9, 1920 Issue

Mind Over Matter

JAMES L. BRUCE

Often in talking with those who have a misconceived sense of Christian Science rather than an understanding of it, the remark is heard, "I believe in the power of mind over matter, just as you do." Further inquiry as to just what the speaker means by this brings out the information that "will," a characteristic of the human mind, has been considered and that this has been regarded as the cardinal point or worth while element of Christian Science. This has been added to other views and the resultant has been considered "better than" or "just as good as" the genuine doctrine.

Now if a person is desirous of learning of the tropics and the flora peculiar to them, he does not inform himself of definitions foreign to the subject nor travel in the polar regions. Just so, one should not study into the suppositional vagaries of the human mind or the machinations of the human will and expect to get a comprehensive grasp of what Mrs. Eddy discovered and gave to the world, but he should travel in the country of he Christian Science literature and study its flora and not the flora of a country that is entirely opposite. On page 295 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" we read, "The theoretical mind is matter, named brain, or material consciousness, the exact opposite of real Mind, or Spirit," and again on page 144 of the same book, "Human will-power is not Science." Now this endeavor to identify the divine Mind with the human mind, and to counterfeit the expression of infinite intelligence with will power may seem modern, yet it has been a problem for centuries. Hume, reaching out for its solution, said that mind, and in fact all that man was, amounted to but the association and relation of ideas gained from matter through the five physical senses. Following him to a logical conclusion ends in skepticism.

To refute this argument, his more spiritually minded opponents began at its other end, as it were. They claimed that matter itself was but an idea, though of course, idea of the human mind. This leads us to no higher plane. It is like two men traveling in the same circle but in different directions. Sometimes they seem far apart, yet sooner or later, materialist or idealist, they arrive at the same point; for the human mind's belief and matter are one and the same thing. But, it may be said, mind and matter are so unlike they cannot possibly be the same thing. In a superficial sense this seems true, so it may be clearer to say they are different forms of the same thing. A good illustration of this is that by application of heat to water it becomes steam, by cold it becomes ice, and by electricity it becomes two colorless gases, hydrogen and oxygen. It is not difficult to see that the steam and ice, though dissimilar, are but different forms of water. Yet hydrogen and oxygen, though quite unrecognizable as water and possessing properties at variance with water,—as, for example, when they are united under proper conditions and ignited they produce a tremendous heat,—are but the original in different forms. So with the evidence of these seeming facts before us, is it too much to say that mind and matter, though unrecognizably alike, are but different forms of the same thing?

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