Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.djvu/310

298 Etherization will apparently cause the body to disappear. Before the thoughts are fully at rest, the limbs will vanish from consciousness. Nay, the whole frame will sink from sight, along with surrounding objects, leaving the pain standing forth as distinctly as a mountain-peak, as if it were a separate bodily member. At last the agony also vanishes. This process shows the pain to be in the mind; for the inflammation is not suppressed; and the pain will presently be felt again, unless the mental image occasioning it be removed by Mind, the Truth of Being.

Matter is never inflamed, never causes this derangement. Fear, conscious or unconscious, produces all inflammation. Note how fear makes the face pallid. It either retards the circulation or quickens it, causing a pale cheek, or a flushed. Even so fear increases or diminishes the secretions, the breathing, the action of the bowels, the action of the heart. The muscles that move quickly or slowly, impelled or palsied by fear, represent the action of all the organs of the human system, including viscera and brains. To remove the fear you must remove the images that produce it.

Whatever the belief is, if arguments are used to destroy it, that belief must be negatived; and the negation must extend to the supposed disease, and to whatever decides its type and symptoms. Truth is affirmative, and confers harmony. All metaphysical logic is inspired by this simple rule of Truth that governs all reality. Mortal mind, or intelligent matter, is an impossibility. You may say: “But if matter and disease are one and the same, why do you insist that disease is formed by mind and not by matter?” Because, the nearer matter