Article September 11, 1920 Issue

The human mind is much concerned about the words...

The Christian Science Monitor

The human mind is much concerned about the words "more" and "less." It is continually reaching out for more health, wealth, pleasure, or peace; in fact, for more of everything of which it can conceive as being something that will add to its store of good. It is equally persistent in its striving for less pain, poverty, sorrow, or turmoil; that is, less of everything of which it conceives as being something that will decrease its store of evil. This endeavor of the human mind to acquire more good and less evil might well be commended if we could only rely on its conception of what is good and what is evil, and if the manner of attaining or avoiding these were always unquestionable. But only a casual glance at our past experiences shows us that these conceptions are often erroneous, that the manner of obtaining our desires is as often wrong. The pleasure we honestly accept to-day as adding to our store of good may add but tenfold to our seeming store of evil. The discipline, perhaps, which seems to increase our already inharmonious condition, may but multiply our apparent good. Since the object or objective sought is often so radically different from that which is won, the most natural conclusion is that the human mind which has passed judgment on our affairs is untrustworthy.

Now this is not difficult to understand when we learn in Christian Science that the human mind is but a different stratum of matter, so that these ideas of "more" and "less" enter into our human experience because of the materiality of the human mind. Materiality, because of its very nature, is limited. In its grosser form its limitation is very evident. Length, breadth, and thickness are its concomitants. If there can be one material world they can be numberless. In dealing with these thoughts of limitation acres are added to acres, dollars to dollars, and in this process of adding is the idea of "more." The process of addition may be changed to the process of subtraction and the idea of "less" enters into the transaction. The subtler forms of materiality are apparent in the human mind itself, always engaged in adding joys and subtracting sorrows. So if mankind is to escape from this thought of "more and less" it must be liberated from materiality, or, in other words, the mentality in which these things seem to exist. It must in all humility and sincerity turn to the only Mind, which is the divine.

Now the divine Mind is not in the least concerned with the words "more" and "less," nor with the word "good" in a comparative sense, and with the word "evil" not one iota. It in itself is All. It is perfection and completeness. It is infinity. To conceive of more or less in connection with Being is unthinkable. It is like speaking of a circle as more or less round. Such words do not enter into divine Mind. The classification "good" or "evil" is as equally unknown, since all-good cannot partake of evil, which would be the case had evil any reality, any existence which Mind could know.

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