Page:Science and Health.djvu/442

438 live after death we lived before birth. Life has no beginning, therefore no end; all that is material must disappear before man is found immortal. How strange, then, to conclude man would have had no individual being unless he had been individualized through matter, an impossible beginning of Intelligence.

The body never affected the Life of man for a moment; eating never made him live, nor abstaining from food caused him to die. Do you believe this? No! Do you understand it? No! and this is the only reason that you doubt it; the cadaverous dyspeptic learning this, has a sweet face without a sour stomach, and is nearer the kingdom of heaven than you. We are attracted or repelled mentally without knowing the thoughts that lead to this. We weep because others weep, and laugh because they laugh, and have small-pox on this ground, for disease is not hereditary or contagious only through mind. The more spiritual we are, the more conscious to us is an error of belief. Surrounded by minds filled with thoughts of disease, constantly dwelling upon their bodies, and with some complaint always ready, the spiritual suffer greatly in this mental atmosphere; such involuntary agents of pain to themselves and others, must be reformed. When mental contagion is understood, these people will be avoided as we now avoid small-pox. To stop the manufacture of disease and give us a better mental atmosphere, is worthy the present age of progress. We would sooner risk our health, inhaling the miasma of a rice swamp, than be obliged to listen constantly to complaints of sickness, or through sympathy or society be kept in the mental atmosphere of the sick; some natures may stand it, but ours has a struggle.