Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 56.djvu/192

182 soreheads, who call themselves the Reformed College of Neminism.' With this, she would not listen to another word about Sciosophy.

"Then I regretted that I had said anything, for this pleasant lesson came to an abrupt end, and left me without even the customary card to ponder over. I still wondered what could be the secret meaning of N. N. N., nihil nemini nocet.

"On the next day the storm had blown over, or rather, like all other storms, it had no real existence, and the smile of the president at the closing act of the lesson was the sweetest I had ever seen, the most perfect witness to the truth of her teachings.

"She took up the subject of Materia Medica. After reading from a printed book the names of a host of poisons, from Abacus to Swamproot and Sandalwood and Zygadene, she warned us against them all. All are alike evil. All alike have no real existence. Therefore the student will do well not to learn their names. It will only interfere with his serenity of mind, and perfect serenity is the sole symptom of success.

"'Surely this is better,' she said, 'than to support the popular systems of medicine, when the physician may be perchance an infidel and lose ninety-and-nine patients where Neminism cures its hundred. Is it because Osteopathy and Ostariopathy are more fashionable and less spiritual? Even business men have found that Neministic Science enhances their physical and mental powers, enlarges their perception of character, gives them acuteness and comprehensiveness, and an ability to exceed their ordinary business capacity,'

"Then she gave me this card:

"'N. N. N. In 1866 this discovery was made by me and by me alone: "The erring Mortal misnamed Mind produces all the organism and action of the mortal body." This led to the demonstration that Mind is All and matter is naught, and being nothing, nothing hurts nobody. Nobody hurts nothing, which proves it plainly by inversion. Nihil nocet nemini; nihil nemini nocet.'

"On the eighth day the president discoursed on Anatomy. Referring briefly to the pernicious notions of the 'ancients,' as with a broad sweep of her hand she designated the professors in Boston and Cambridge, concerning the structure of the human body, she called it the nightmare of undigested learning.' Why should we care where the jugular vein goes, when we know that there is no jugular vein? What of bones and muscles, and teguments and integuments?" Toil fatigues me," you say; but what is this me? Is it muscle or Mind? Which is tired, and so speaks? Without