Editorial April 20, 1968 Issue

What Is Life?

William Milford Correll

There has been steady advance in the analysis of the material beliefs of what determines heredity and character development. And there have been conjectures on finding the ultimate nature and source of life, even to the point of arbitrarily and chemically producing life and determining heredity. But a very central and vital question remains unanswered. What is life? With all the detailed analysis of matter structure, the researchers have not been able to define life. Plato's analysis of material life, likened to the dwellers in a cave who face away from the source of light, studying the shadows on the wall, is still graphically accurate.

Christian Science discloses that Life is Spirit, divine Principle, or God. Real Life is not in matter or determined by it. The human phenomena observed as the material evidences of life are but the shadows on the wall. By the manipulation of belief human research may produce different shadows; but men will never arrive at the source of life through the analysis of matter. Mrs. Eddy discusses this basic question in the textbook, Science and Health. She writes: "Naturalists ask: "What can there be, of a material nature, transmitted through these bodies called eggs,—themselves composed of the simplest material elements,—by which all peculiarities of ancestry, belonging to either sex, are brought down from generation to generation?' The question of the naturalist amounts to this: How can matter originate or transmit mind? We answer that it cannot. Darkness and doubt encompass thought, so long as it bases creation on materiality."^{Science and Health, p. 551;}

It is true that human existence is the expression of human consciousness; and as the beliefs of mortals change, there will be changes in human experience. But one can never arrive at a scientific analysis of life until he finds out that Life is God, Spirit. The belief of life in matter is a supposition, a counterfeit of Life. Christ Jesus understood these scientific facts. He knew that God is the only creator and that man is the perfect child of God. He knew that man is spiritual and that he derives all his characteristics from God, the one source of intelligence and life.

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