Page:Science and Health.djvu/157

Rh To trample on the belief of sickness, and to regard yourself superior to it, is wise; but to fear sickness, causes it, by acknowledging its supremacy over you. If you possess Love, Wisdom, or Truth, you have Life, that is superior to death, sickness, or sin, and you ought to prove this fact by demonstration.

If thought is startled at the strong claims of the science of being, and doubts them, are we not surprised also, by the claims of evil? but admit them, although discord is unreal and Truth not as surprising or arbitrary as error.

When sound is interpreted by personal sense, it is but a belief that may be lost with a single change of opinion regarding it, but where it exists in its Principle, we hold it in Soul, and a self-conscious capacity undying. The belief that the so-called dead speak audibly to the living, gives a mental impression the same as other beliefs, and has no more reality than those. Sound is produced by mental impressions, and not by the action of air on the mechanism of the ear. Hearing is not dependent on matter, but depends either on belief or the understanding. Those believing in “spirits,” may produce to personal sense the impression of sound that has the same reality to them as the more common modus operandi has to others. It is mind alone that hears, and mind that gives the impression of sound; and this is proved by clairvoyance.

One individual believes he must use his hands to bring a rose in contact with the olfactories; and another, equally sincere, believes legerdemain can do this; and a third, that the so-called dead handle the rose for him; but each one has produced this phenomenon
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