Article January 13, 1951 Issue

MATTER, MYTHOLOGY

PERCIVAL ROBERTSON

The human desire to account for natural events has led at times to explanations that seem fantastic to modern thought. Greeks and Romans accounted for the dawn and the daylight by saying that Eos, or Aurora, one of their goddesses, came forth to herald Helios, god of the sun, who, driving a chariot drawn by white horses, made the daylight. Again, the barrenness of earth during the winter they believed was occasioned by Demeter, the goddess of agriculture, who would not allow the fruit of the earth to spring up again until her abducted daughter, Persephone, was allowed to spend at least half of the year with her. Still again, if one was afflicted with some mysterious illness, it was presumed that he had somehow offended one of the gods and that his remedy lay in discovering which god was insulted and in some way placating him. Such stories, or explanations, are called myths today, and a body of such myths is known as mythology. Intelligent people now look upon these stories with considerable disdain, and there is a general feeling that people who believed such tales were at least very simple and credulous.

The thoughtful individual of today may perhaps ask with propriety, "Are not some of the commonly accepted explanations for many natural events as fantastic and unreal as those of classical times?" Modern theories attribute so much to matter or to material causes. The first synonym in the definition of matter which Mary Baker Eddy gives in the Glossary of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" is "mythology" (p. 591). She here indicates that matter is mythology, a whole collection of myths. It may prove useful to others, as it has to the writer, to consider some of the prevalent matter myths of the day and at the same time to realize clearly that they are not the facts of being. They are only fantastic tales used to explain natural phenomena, and they are as destitute of truth as are the classical myths.

One commonly accepted theory which may well be called a myth is that the matter brain produces thought. A recent writer has given a striking, if quite inadequate, picture of the awakening brain, comparing it to an intricate network of lines with intersections, with stationary flashing lights at the intersections and traveling lights along the lines, all this producing the activity of mind. Complicated calculating machines have been developed by modern engineering work somewhat after this fashion, but neither they nor material brains really think. How can they? Such machines may be able to perform complicated mathematical computations, but they cannot solve even the simplest problems of human relationships. Matter and Spirit are so opposite that a matter brain could never evolve a spiritual idea.

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