Editorial September 1, 1923 Issue

Mental Diagnosis

Albert F. Gilmore

The student of Christian Science learns to analyze thought; for Christian Science deals primarily, and secondarily as well, from the standpoint of divine Mind, with the claim of an opposite so-called mortal or human mind. If we know that all causation is spiritually mental, the only value there can possibly be in examining material conditions is to gain what information there may appear to be, which may be of use in destroying the seeming procuring cause of disease, discord, and all unreality. Christian Scientists also learn that the false manifestation may by reversal lead to the spiritual truth. A signboard which points in a wrong direction, if the error be known, may lead the wise person in the right way. Mrs. Eddy says of this situation in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 267), "Thought is borrowed from a higher source than matter, and by reversal, errors serve as waymarks to the one Mind, in which all error disappears in celestial Truth."

Diagnosis, as the word is commonly used, applies to medical practice and has to do with the examination of the physical body. The basis of information which makes the skillful diagnostician is a knowledge of anatomy—that is, of the human mechanism—and of physiology, which deals with the operations and functions of that mechanism. The student of Christian Science learns that the seeming material body is but a counterfeit of the spiritual or real man; hence, any information gained by a study of its members and their functions can by no possibility be productive of advantage, except such as results from the study of any false belief or appearance.

However, as we have seen, such knowledge may by reversal point to the truth. Mrs. Eddy's exact language regarding this situation is this: "Science reverses the false testimony of the physical senses, and by this reversal mortals arrive at the fundamental facts of being" (Science and Health, p. 120). As illustrative of the application, she further states in answer to the inevitable question which arises in this relation: "Is a man sick if the material senses indicate that he is in good health? No! for matter can make no conditions for man. And is he well if the senses say he is sick? Yes, he is well in Science in which health is normal and disease is abnormal."

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Eternal Life
September 1, 1923
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