Article November 1, 2013

Thinking

Originally published in the April 27, 1921 issue of The Christian Science Monitor

To think is to reflect the intelligence of Mind, for Mind is the only intelligence. Now human reason will readily admit that to think is to bring to bear the faculties of intelligence, but human reason all too frequently admits the false hypothesis that intelligence may be a virtue of the human mind, and this erroneous premise leads to equally false conclusions, namely, that there may be varying grades of intelligence, that one person may be in some way endowed with a higher degree of intelligence than another, and that that person is capable of the best thinking who is invested with the highest intellect.

This, briefly, is the theory on which human autocracies have been built,—the theory that certain leaders are better able to do the thinking for the masses than the individuals constituting the masses are able to think for themselves. In national and religious autocracies the people have often been so subjected to the domination of men of rank and power that, instead of thinking and acting intelligently, they have become mere automatons, following blindly the course laid down for them by those to whom they have been trained to look as their superiors. Of course the very fact of such a condition indicates the depraved state of thinking of which it is the outcome. Stripped of its disguise, it is nothing more nor less than the belief that God is a respecter of persons, which is directly contrary to what the Scriptures declare. The fact is that Mind, being the Mind or intelligence of creation, is no less available to one than to all, and that man, being idea, reflects Mind.

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