To those unacquainted with the teachings of Christian Science, Mrs. Eddy's words on page 23 of "Miscellaneous Writings" may seem startling, but they assuredly are worthy of the deepest consideration. She says: "Reason and revelation declare that God is both noumenon and phenomena,—the first and only cause. The universe, including man, is not a result of atomic action, material force or energy; it is not organized dust."

The terms "noumenon" and "phenomenon" were employed by Aristotle and other Greek metaphysicians,—the first term to represent the entity, substance, reality, or truth of being, and the second to represent the seeming instead of the presence of the entity, substance, reality, or truth of being. Many contended, Aristotle among them, that what is termed matter is no more than a suppositional creation from the evidence furnished by the five physical senses; that all such alleged evidence has shown itself to be more or less untrustworthy, superficial, and deceiving, and hence no proper foundation upon which to declare what is true ; and therefore that matter is to be classified as phenomenon, or seeming, instead of the truth of being. Those who took the opposite opinion, now usually termed materialists, admitted that matter is phenomenon, or seeming,—for they were driven to admit the unreliability of the evidence furnished by physical sense,—but they also affirmed that matter is noumenon, or the truth of being.

These two classes of thinkers, joined by physicists on both sides during past decades, have waged a wordy and apparently interminable argumentation. The very nature of their field of discussion prevents a final victory for either side, for reasons now to be stated. Both sides look to matter for their "facts" or "evidence;" but if matter is only phenomenon, or seeming, it can furnish no evidence worthy of the name evidence, it can furnish no more than what is sometimes called "presumptive evidence" or "inferential evidence." But these terms stand for what is only negative evidence, at most; hence for arguments rather than for affirmative evidence.

On the other hand, if the materialists were right in their contention, long since they would have been able to array evidential facts of a conclusive nature to their support. When they are reminded of this, they stubbornly answer that the world is young yet and there may be much evidence to be produced in the future, that both sides equally lack affirmative evidential facts, and that thus far both sides are merely arguing the same old question inconclusively. It is apparent that those who affirm that matter is phenomenon, or seeming, are affirming a negation, so long as they keep within the limits of the old field of discussion, and are facing the difficulty of proving a negative by means of direct affirmative evidence.

Christian Science has removed the limitations which here-tofore have bounded the field discussion. No longer can it justly be the reproach of metaphysics that it is a fruitless war of words, a "marching of an army up a hill just to march it down again," or a labyrinth whose only exit is into "nowhere;" for Christian Science has pushed the contention between noumenon and phenomenon out of its old field of argumentation, which was without affirmative evidential facts, into another field, where it employs affirmative evidential facts as the sure basis for its doctrine and practice, and for the unanswerable deduction that matter cannot be more than a temporal seeming. Christian Science teaches that "all is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all" (Science and Health, p. 468). Again on page 270 we read: "Matter and Mind are opposites. One is contrary to the other in its very nature and essence; hence both cannot be real. If one is real, the other must be unreal." This statement is of the utmost importance in a practical way to the worker in Christian Science.

Following along the line pursued and demonstrated by Jesus, Christian Science has already accumulated a vast array of the highest evidence that infinite Mind with its omnipresent and omnipotent energies and activities is the reality; from which the logical deduction is inevitable, as Mrs. Eddy wisely affirms, that what is termed matter cannot also exist as a co-reality. The victory is won, and always can be won, on this field of discussion; therefore it is here that the evidence and argumentation ought to be waged. The old field of discussion allures the Christian Scientist reasoner, as the writer knows from his own experience; after much reflection on the subject he is strongly inclined to the present opinion, which is here submitted for the consideration of the reader, namely, that we do not need to engage in the old lines of discussion between noumenon and phenomenon, and that such lines of discussion, consisting as they ever have of argumentation largely based upon negative rather than affirmative evidence, lead to nothing supremely decisive and tend to divert attention from the unmistakable victory in the newer field of discussion, which Christian Science has made both possible and attractive to thinkers.

When a wise and experienced advocate in the court-room finds that the evidence, the law, and sound reasoning all point to a sure victory for his client along a plain pathway in his case, he realizes that it would be unwisdom and more or less hazardous on his part to permit himself to be tempted into any other path of discussion in which he may opine that he has on his side decidedly the better evidence, law, and reasoning to support his client's contention, but which nevertheless is open to plausible opposing argumentation. For he realizes that the attention of the jury and court may be diverted to the unsure field of discussion, and its uncertainties more or less be confused with the points which would be capable of sure triumph if left to themselves. Besides, when an opinion is changed there is quite apt to be a rebound, and the pendulum will swing to the left according to the distance it has swung to the right.

Reference is sometimes made by Christian Scientists to the teaching of modern physics that we experience color sensations not because things are actually colored, but because the optic nerve is excited in a particular way by vibrations in an invisible medium termed the ether; but is it not, after all, so far as the premise of the argument is concerned, merely the substitution of one material belief for another? Are not the conjectural facts of vibrations in the ether and the optic nerve as much beliefs about matter as the older belief that color resides in a material object?

Color and the other so-called material objects which are testified to by the so-called five physical senses, are each and all mental concepts; but is it not better to appeal to our unanswered and unanswerable arguments by deduction, which has rightly been called a system of pure reason, taking the basic truth of the allness of infinite Mind and the infinite manifestation thereof for the premise and deducing therefrom the inevitable correlative truth of the nonentity and unreality of matter? This gets us away from any confusing inconclusiveness which continues to adhere to the older metaphysics about noumenon and phenomenon as applied to matter, notwithstanding that modern physicists may substitute newer theories of matter in place of the older theories. We get away from the hopeless circles of metaphysical argumentation about the nature of matter which prevailed before the advent of Christian Science.

The Christian Science doctrines, and practice perforce, must stand or fall in the opinions of mankind upon their own intrinsic merits as eternal verities. Even if physics may, at some future time, establish by affirmative evidence the negation or denial of the entity of matter, how would that, after all, establish the major and fundamental verity in Christian Science of the eternal allness of infinite Mind and the infinite manifestation thereof? It is true that profound and learned thinker, Mary Baker Eddy, tentatively referred to some of the later teachings in physics concerning color and the like, and we should probably have wondered at it if she had failed to do so in her wide and extensive lines of thinking; but she bases her doctrine and argument about matter upon the fundamental truth in the "scientific statement of being" already quoted in part, "All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all," stating also the correlative negations concerning matter, inclusive of the so-called man; adding, however, to the negation of physical man, the corelative statement about the real man, namely, that "he is spiritual."

It would be germane to this article to consider the already accumulated mass of evidence, unsurpassed and, more than that, unequaled both in quality and quantity in the entire history of evidence, which demonstrates the absolute trustworthiness of Mrs. Eddy's foregoing statement. As a matter of knowledge of current advance in thought, it cannot harm any reader to keep abreast of the changing views of the physicists about color, the substitution of conjectured electrical ions, in place of the former conjectured atoms, as the hypothetical "units" of matter, etc. In the final sense, however, all this mass of changing guesswork and theoretical conjecture concerning matter, however interesting to the Christian Scientist observer, ought never to be used as the basis of argument so long as it serves, after all, as a suggestion of the reality of matter by merely substituting newer and possibly more plausible and persuasive materialistic theories concerning matter.

In other words, let the physicists and metaphysicians the old field of discussion about matter get together and fight out their never-ending battle by themselves, and let not the great truths of the Christian Science contention become muddled in any student's thought by using the inconclusive argumentation of those who array themselves under the banner of "phenomenon" versus "noumenon," however tempting it may appear at first view because of its apparent parallelism to Christian Science views. The healing work of Christian Science rightly holds us to the straight and narrow path of reasoning outlined by Christ Jesus and revealed anew to the present age in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" and Mrs. Eddy's other writings.

Copyright, 1916, by The Christian Science Publishing Society