Article May 5, 1945 Issue

Multiplying Good

GEORGE EWALD ECKSTEIN

I Remember that when I was first learning the multiplication table it was easy for me to learn that 4×4 is 16, and that 8×8 is 64, but I could not seem to grasp the idea that 8×0 is always 0. Because the 8 looked so much like something. I thought that the 0 must be something if it was multiplied by 8. It took a great deal of persuasion and illustration on the part of the teacher to enable me to grasp the truth. The teacher's method of illustration was to give me nothing eight times. Then I finally realized that I still had nothing.

In the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy writes (p. 126), "The problem of nothingness, or 'dust to dust,' will be solved, and mortal mind will be without form and void, for mortality will cease when man beholds himself God's reflection, even as man sees his reflection in a glass," Mrs. Eddy has also written in the same book (p. 346). "The nothingness of nothing is plain: but we need to understand that error is nothing, and that its nothingness is not saved, but must be demonstrated in order to prove the somethingness—yea, the allness—of Truth." Is not this error the same as the zero in a multiplication problem? When we see it alone we see it in its character of nothingness. When the same zero masquerades as an integral part of a mathematical problem, it appears very different. It poses as a problem when it is not, for disposing of eight times nothing really presents no problem at all, because it is no problem to take care of nothing.

The error of mortal mind works the same way. To declare its nothingness makes it impossible for it to pose as cause and seem to multiply our afflictions. Eight times nothing is still nothing.

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