Page:Science and Health.djvu/370

366 by Soul and not sense, Spirit and not matter. If the law of Truth, Life and Love, produced sickness, no law of matter could destroy it, and it were morally wrong to employ means acting against this government; the law of God is the only admissible authority in the universe, but this law pertains to mind and not matter. What, then, is left to physiology but crossbones and skulls? Man will never be learned in harmony and immortality until the error of physiology is destroyed by Spirit triumphing over matter.

Because the muscles of a blacksmith's arm are strongly developed, it does not follow that exercise did this, or that he whose habits are sedentary must be fragile. If matter was the cause of action, and muscles without mind used the anvil and smote the nail, such an inference might be true; but muscles act in obedience to man, hence the fact that mind and not matter enlarges and strengthens them only through the demand man makes on them, and the corresponding power he supplies, and not because of exercise or muscles, but the blacksmith is the strength of his arm.

Man moves his own body and develops it in whatever direction mind determines; whether consciously or unconsciously, it matters not. The feats of the gymnast are proofs that the latent powers of man are unknown to him; mind fixing on some achievement, makes its accomplishment easy. Had Blondin believed he could not walk a rope over Niagara's abyss of waters, to accomplish that feat would have been impossible; but, understanding it could be done, he lost his fear and gave his muscles flexibility and power that was attributed, perhaps, to a lubricating oil. When Homer sang