Editorial March 3, 1962 Issue

Education and Reality

Carl J. Welz

A popular theory of educational psychology says that man is a mechanism, resembling a computer but much more complex. It theorizes that mentality is simply the action of a mechanism and that education is a process of training the mechanism to follow certain patterns, give desired responses to certain stimuli. According to this theory, morality is useful only to keep the mechanism in good operating condition.

A clear line of distinction separates this theory from reality as taught in Christian Science. The real man is a spiritual idea of divine Mind, God. The belief of mind in matter, called mortal mind, on the other hand, creates in supposition a computer-like mortal that appears to think only by repeating impressions made upon its brain-nerve mechanism. Reflecting omniscient Mind, God's man already knows all. He reflects wisdom, skill, perception, righteousness, inspiration. Education, then, is not a process of training a mechanism, but is one of freeing the mortal from the mortal mind belief and unveiling the real man.

"Mortals are not like immortals, created in God's own image; but infinite Spirit being all, mortal consciousness will at last yield to the scientific fact and disappear, and the real sense of being, perfect and forever intact, will appear" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mrs. Eddy, p. 295). Christian Science subjects to the truth of the one Mind, God, the false belief that mortal mind's dream of a mechanism has consciousness. Morality is not a mere matter of mechanical expediency; it is alignment with the one Mind, agreement with the spiritual nature of man in Mind's image.

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