Page:Valid Objections to So-called Christian Science (1902).pdf/20

 stance external to consciousness, are an impossibility. Pleasure and pain, then, as the result of anything exterior to the mind, are simply not. There is no such thing as physical disease, defect, or shortcoming. Imperfection, as we suppose we see it in Nature and man, manifested to the outward senses, is contrary to reason. It is defective thought on our part that makes this illusory image. Everything is perfect; nothing is wrong or out of gear—we simply imagine it so. Sin, actively considered, is defective thought—not a moral and physical action or state, limited in time and space. It is a mere phantasma, that can be dissipated by simply conceiving that it is non-existent.

And thus, through the whole category, we find the same intangible, indefinite, and nebulous optimism which takes account of no obligation to things objective, save to ignore them, and puts all realities alone in the realm of the subjective consciousness.

But this consciousness, as philosophers know, does not exist or come into development until an adequate series of impressions from tangible objects without have become recorded in sensation and retained in memory; nor is thought