Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/270

228 is that evil is not only unnecessary but unreal. Admitting evil as a legitimate part of the whole would be to deny that the whole was good and was God. Admitting evil in opposition to good would be to deny that good and God were the whole. Whenever a train of reasoning seemed to be leading to the wrong place, Mrs. Eddy could always drop a stitch and begin a new pattern on the other side. Since neither the allness of God nor the Godhood of all could explain the injuries and persecutions which she felt were inflicted upon her, she fell back upon Mortal Mind.

"As used in Christian Science," she says, "animal magnetism is the specific term for Error, or Mortal Mind."

Mortal Mind is Mrs. Eddy's explanation of the seeming existence of evil in the world. Whatever seems to be harmful,—sin, sickness, earthquakes, convulsions of the elements,—are due to the influence of Mortal Mind. Now, Mortal Mind, she says, has no real existence except as a harmful tradition; she affirms that its very name is a fallacy, and she admits it merely for the sake of argument. Hence, though there is no such thing as evil, there is an accumulated belief in evil, a tradition which overshadows us, as Mrs. Eddy says, "like the deadly Upas tree." The belief in evil, then, is the only evil that exists. This belief is Mortal Mind, and Mortal Mind is Mesmerism.