Page:The Origin of Christian Science.djvu/174

166 her psychology renders Mrs. Eddy's system hopeless. It is on a foundation of sand. Her system will not stand the psychological test. She denies that the body affects or limits in any way the mind. She of course denies that matter can have sensations or think or form ideas. She maintains that the mind has perfect knowledge only. Whence then are all these imperfect mental states? In what hypostasis or nature do they inhere? “In reality there is no mortal mind,” she says. Then if there is nothing to give birth to false notions, they cannot and do not exist. Nor can the supposition that they exist be possible, for there is no mind that can have this false supposition.

Mrs. Eddy says there is no sickness because matter is unreal; and that the cure to be performed is simply banishing the notion that one is sick, which is a false belief. But now since there is nothing to cause a false belief to be and nothing in which it can be, no false belief exists. So there is no more need to cure false notions than rheumatic joints, for neither exists. Mrs. Eddy's propaganda is a war against what does not exist. By its own confession it is a useless enterprise. If we do not need medicine because there is no body to have disease, we do not need books or teachers to help us get rid of notions that we do not have.