Science and Health
with Key to The Scriptures
by Mary Baker Eddy
Chapter VII - Physiology

 

False stimulus
186:1
only by removing the influence on him of this mind, by
emptying his thought of the false stimulus
and reaction of will-power and filling it with
the divine energies of Truth.
186:5
Christian Science destroys material beliefs through the
understanding of Spirit, and the thoroughness of this work
determines health. Erring human mind-forces can work
only evil under whatever name or pretence they are em-
ployed; for Spirit and matter, good and evil, light and
darkness, cannot mingle.
Evil negative and self-destructive
186:11
Evil is a negation, because it is the absence of truth.
It is nothing, because it is the absence of something. It
is unreal, because it presupposes the absence
of God, the omnipotent and omnipresent.
Every mortal must learn that there is neither
power nor reality in evil.
186:17
Evil is self-assertive. It says: "I am a real entity, over-
mastering good." This falsehood should strip evil of all
pretensions. The only power of evil is to destroy itself. It
can never destroy one iota of good. Every attempt of evil
to destroy good is a failure, and only aids in peremptorily
punishing the evil-doer. If we concede the same reality to
discord as to harmony, discord has as lasting a claim upon
us as has harmony. If evil is as real as good, evil is also as
immortal. If death is as real as Life, immortality is a myth.
If pain is as real as the absence of pain, both must be im-
mortal; and if so, harmony cannot be the law of being.
Ignorant idolatry
186:28
Mortal mind is ignorant of self, or it could never be
self-deceived. If mortal mind knew how to be better, it
would be better. Since it must believe in some-
thing besides itself, it enthrones matter as deity.
The human mind has been an idolater from the beginning,
187:1
having other gods and believing in more than the one
Mind.
187:3
As mortals do not comprehend even mortal existence,
how ignorant must they be of the all-knowing Mind and
of His creations.
187:6
Here you may see how so-called material sense creates
its own forms of thought, gives them material names, and
then worships and fears them. With pagan blindness,
it attributes to some material god or medicine an ability
beyond itself. The beliefs of the human mind rob and
enslave it, and then impute this result to another illusive
personification, named Satan.
Action of mortal mind
187:13
The valves of the heart, opening and closing for the pas-
sage of the blood, obey the mandate of mor-
tal mind as directly as does the hand, ad-
mittedly moved by the will. Anatomy allows the mental
cause of the latter action, but not of the former.
187:18
We say, "My hand hath done it." What is this my but
mortal mind, the cause of all materialistic action? All
voluntary, as well as miscalled involuntary, action of the
mortal body is governed by this so-called mind, not by
matter. There is no involuntary action. The divine Mind
includes all action and volition, and man in Science is gov-
erned by this Mind. The human mind tries to classify
action as voluntary and involuntary, and suffers from the
attempt.
Death and the body
187:27
If you take away this erring mind, the mortal material
body loses all appearance of life or action, and this so‑
called mind then calls itself dead; but the hu-
man mind still holds in belief a body, through
which it acts and which appears to the human mind to
live, – a body like the one it had before death. This body
188:1
is put off only as the mortal, erring mind yields to God,
immortal Mind, and man is found in His image.
Embryonic sinful thoughts
188:3
What is termed disease does not exist. It is neither
mind nor matter. The belief of sin, which has grown
terrible in strength and influence, is an uncon-
scious error in the beginning, – an embryonic
thought without motive; but afterwards it
governs the so-called man. Passion, depraved appetites,
dishonesty, envy, hatred, revenge ripen into action, only to
pass from shame and woe to their final punishment.
Disease a dream
188:11
Mortal existence is a dream of pain and pleasure in
matter, a dream of sin, sickness, and death; and it is like
the dream we have in sleep, in which every one
recognizes his condition to be wholly a state of
mind. In both the waking, and the sleeping dream, the
dreamer thinks that his body is material and the suffering
is in that body.
188:18
The smile of the sleeper indicates the sensation pro-
duced physically by the pleasure of a dream. In the
same way pain and pleasure, sickness and care, are
traced upon mortals by unmistakable signs.
188:22
Sickness is a growth of error, springing from mortal
ignorance or fear. Error rehearses error. What causes
disease cannot cure it. The soil of disease is mortal
mind, and you have an abundant or scanty crop of disease,
according to the seedlings of fear. Sin and the fear of
disease must be uprooted and cast out.
Sense yields to understanding
188:28
When darkness comes over the earth, the physical
senses have no immediate evidence of a sun.
The human eye knows not where the orb of
day is, nor if it exists. Astronomy gives the
desired information regarding the sun. The human or
189:1
material senses yield to the authority of this science, and
they are willing to leave with astronomy the explanation of
the sun's influence over the earth. If the eyes see no sun
for a week, we still believe that there is solar light and
heat. Science (in this instance named natural) raises
the human thought above the cruder theories of the
human mind, and casts out a fear.
189:8
In like manner mortals should no more deny the power
of Christian Science to establish harmony and to explain
the effect of mortal mind on the body, though the cause
be unseen, than they should deny the existence of the sun-
light when the orb of day disappears, or doubt that the sun
will reappear. The sins of others should not make good
men suffer.
Ascending the scale
189:15
We call the body material; but it is as truly mortal
mind, according to its degree, as is the material brain
which is supposed to furnish the evidence
of all mortal thought or things. The human
mortal mind, by an inevitable perversion, makes all
things start from the lowest instead of from the highest
mortal thought. The reverse is the case with all the
formations of the immortal divine Mind. They proceed
from the divine source; and so, in tracing them, we con-
stantly ascend in infinite being.
Human reproduction
189:25
From mortal mind comes the reproduction of the
species, – first the belief of inanimate, and then of ani-
mate matter. According to mortal thought,
the development of embryonic mortal mind
commences in the lower, basal portion of the brain, and
goes on in an ascending scale by evolution, keeping always
in the direct line of matter, for matter is the subjective
condition of mortal mind.
190:1
Next we have the formation of so-called embryonic
mortal mind, afterwards mortal men or mortals, – all this
while matter is a belief, ignorant of itself, ignorant of what
it is supposed to produce. The mortal says that an inani-
mate unconscious seedling is producing mortals, both body
and mind; and yet neither a mortal mind nor the immortal
Mind is found in brain or elsewhere in matter or in mortals.
Human stature
190:8
This embryonic and materialistic human belief called
mortal man in turn fills itself with thoughts
of pain and pleasure, of life and death, and
arranges itself into five so-called senses, which presently
measure mind by the size of a brain and the bulk of a
body, called man.
Human frailty
190:14
Human birth, growth, maturity, and decay are as the
grass springing from the soil with beautiful green blades,
afterwards to wither and return to its native
nothingness. This mortal seeming is temporal;
it never merges into immortal being, but finally disap-
pears, and immortal man, spiritual and eternal, is found
to be the real man.
The Hebrew bard, swayed by mortal thoughts, thus
swept his lyre with saddening strains on human existence:
190:23
As for man, his days are as grass:
As a flower of the field, so he flourisheth.
For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone;
And the place thereof shall know it no more.
190:27
When hope rose higher in the human heart, he sang:
190:28
As for me, I will behold Thy face in righteousness:
I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with Thy likeness.
. . . . .
For with Thee is the fountain of life;
In Thy light shall we see light.
191:1
The brain can give no idea of God's man. It can take
no cognizance of Mind. Matter is not the organ of infi-
nite Mind.
191:4
As mortals give up the delusion that there is more than
one Mind, more than one God, man in God's likeness will
appear, and this eternal man will include in that likeness
no material element.
The immortal birth
191:8
As a material, theoretical life-basis is found to be a
misapprehension of existence, the spiritual and divine
Principle of man dawns upon human thought,
and leads it to "where the young child was,"
– even to the birth of a new-old idea, to the spiritual
sense of being and of what Life includes. Thus the whole
earth will be transformed by Truth on its pinions of light,
chasing away the darkness of error.
Spiritual freedom
191:16
The human thought must free itself from self-imposed
materiality and bondage. It should no longer
ask of the head, heart, or lungs: What are
man's prospects for life? Mind is not helpless. Intelli-
gence is not mute before non-intelligence.
191:21
By its own volition, not a blade of grass springs up, not
a spray buds within the vale, not a leaf unfolds its fair
outlines, not a flower starts from its cloistered cell.
191:24
The Science of being reveals man and immortality as
based on Spirit. Physical sense defines mortal man as
based on matter, and from this premise infers the mor-
tality of the body.
No physical affinity
191:28
The illusive senses may fancy affinities with their op-
posites; but in Christian Science, Truth never mingles
with error. Mind has no affinity with matter,
and therefore Truth is able to cast out the ills
of the flesh. Mind, God, sends forth the aroma of Spirit,
192:1
the atmosphere of intelligence. The belief that a pulpy
substance under the skull is mind is a mockery of intelli-
gence, a mimicry of Mind.
192:4
We are Christian Scientists, only as we quit our reliance
upon that which is false and grasp the true. We are not
Christian Scientists until we leave all for Christ. Human
opinions are not spiritual. They come from the hearing
of the ear, from corporeality instead of from Principle,
and from the mortal instead of from the immortal. Spirit
is not separate from God. Spirit is God.
Human power a blind force
192:11
Erring power is a material belief, a blind miscalled force,
the offspring of will and not of wisdom, of the mortal mind
and not of the immortal. It is the headlong
cataract, the devouring flame, the tempest's
breath. It is lightning and hurricane, all that is selfish,
wicked, dishonest, and impure.
The one real power
192:17
Moral and spiritual might belong to Spirit, who holds
the "wind in His fists;" and this teaching accords with
Science and harmony. In Science, you can
have no power opposed to God, and the physi-
cal senses must give up their false testimony. Your in-
fluence for good depends upon the weight you throw into
the right scale. The good you do and embody gives you
the only power obtainable. Evil is not power. It is a
mockery of strength, which erelong betrays its weakness
and falls, never to rise.
192:27
We walk in the footsteps of Truth and Love by follow-
ing the example of our Master in the understanding of
divine metaphysics. Christianity is the basis of true heal-
ing. Whatever holds human thought in line with unselfed
love, receives directly the divine power.
Mind cures hip-disease
192:32
I was called to visit Mr. Clark in Lynn, who had been
193:1
confined to his bed six months with hip-disease, caused by
a fall upon a wooden spike when quite a boy. On enter-
ing the house I met his physician, who said that
the patient was dying. The physician had just
probed the ulcer on the hip, and said the bone was carious
for several inches. He even showed me the probe, which
had on it the evidence of this condition of the bone. The
doctor went out. Mr. Clark lay with his eyes fixed and
sightless. The dew of death was on his brow. I went to
his bedside. In a few moments his face changed; its
death-pallor gave place to a natural hue. The eyelids
closed gently and the breathing became natural; he was
asleep. In about ten minutes he opened his eyes and
said: "I feel like a new man. My suffering is all gone."
It was between three and four o'clock in the afternoon
when this took place.
193:17
I told him to rise, dress himself, and take supper with
his family. He did so. The next day I saw him in the
yard. Since then I have not seen him, but am informed
that he went to work in two weeks. The discharge from
the sore stopped, and the sore was healed. The diseased
condition had continued there ever since the injury was
received in boyhood.
Since his recovery I have been informed that his physi-
cian claims to have cured him, and that his mother has
been threatened with incarceration in an insane asylum
for saying: "It was none other than God and that woman
who healed him." I cannot attest the truth of that
report, but what I saw and did for that man, and what
his physician said of the case, occurred just as I have
narrated.
193:32
It has been demonstrated to me that Life is God
194:1
and that the might of omnipotent Spirit shares not its
strength with matter or with human will. Review-
ing this brief experience, I cannot fail to discern the
coincidence of the spiritual idea of man with the divine
Mind.
Change of belief
194:6
A change in human belief changes all the physical symp-
toms, and determines a case for better or for
worse. When one's false belief is corrected
Truth sends a report of health over the body.
194:10
Destruction of the auditory nerve and paralysis of the
optic nerve are not necessary to ensure deafness and blind-
ness; for if mortal mind says, "I am deaf and blind," it
will be so without an injured nerve. Every theory op-
posed to this fact (as I learned in metaphysics) would
presuppose man, who is immortal in spiritual under-
standing, a mortal in material belief.
Power of habit
194:17
The authentic history of Kaspar Hauser is a useful hint
as to the frailty and inadequacy of mortal mind. It
proves beyond a doubt that education consti-
tutes this so-called mind, and that, in turn,
mortal mind manifests itself in the body by the false
sense it imparts. Incarcerated in a dungeon, where
neither sight nor sound could reach him, at the age of
seventeen Kaspar was still a mental infant, crying and
chattering with no more intelligence than a babe, and
realizing Tennyson's description:
194:27
An infant crying in the night,
An infant crying for the light,
And with no language but a cry.
194:30
His case proves material sense to be but a belief formed
by education alone. The light which affords us joy gave
195:1
him a belief of intense pain. His eyes were inflamed by
the light. After the babbling boy had been taught to
speak a few words, he asked to be taken back to his dun-
geon, and said that he should never be happy elsewhere.
Outside of dismal darkness and cold silence he found no
peace. Every sound convulsed him with anguish. All
that he ate, except his black crust, produced violent
retchings. All that gives pleasure to our educated senses
gave him pain through those very senses, trained in an
opposite direction.
Useful knowledge
195:11
The point for each one to decide is, whether it is mortal
mind or immortal Mind that is causative. We
should forsake the basis of matter for meta-
physical Science and its divine Principle.
195:15
Whatever furnishes the semblance of an idea governed
by its Principle, furnishes food for thought. Through as-
tronomy, natural history, chemistry, music, mathematics,
thought passes naturally from effect back to cause.
195:19
Academics of the right sort are requisite. Observa-
tion, invention, study, and original thought are expansive
and should promote the growth of mortal mind out of it-
self, out of all that is mortal.
195:23
It is the tangled barbarisms of learning which we
deplore, – the mere dogma, the speculative theory, the
nauseous fiction. Novels, remarkable only for their
exaggerated pictures, impossible ideals, and specimens
of depravity, fill our young readers with wrong tastes
and sentiments. Literary commercialism is lowering the
intellectual standard to accommodate the purse and to
meet a frivolous demand for amusement instead of for
improvement. Incorrect views lower the standard of
truth.
196:1
If materialistic knowledge is power, it is not wisdom.
It is but a blind force. Man has "sought out many inven-
tions," but he has not yet found it true that knowledge can
save him from the dire effects of knowledge. The power
of mortal mind over its own body is little understood.
Sin destroyed through suffering
196:6
Better the suffering which awakens mortal mind from
its fleshly dream, than the false pleasures
which tend to perpetuate this dream. Sin
alone brings death, for sin is the only element
of destruction.
196:11
"Fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body
in hell," said Jesus. A careful study of this text allows
that here the word soul means a false sense or material
consciousness. The command was a warning to beware,
not of Rome, Satan, nor of God, but of sin. Sickness,
sin, and death are not concomitants of Life or Truth.
No law supports them. They have no relation to God
wherewith to establish their power. Sin makes its own
hell, and goodness its own heaven.
Dangerous shoals avoided
196:20
Such books as will rule disease out of mortal mind, –
and so efface the images and thoughts of dis-
ease, instead of impressing them with forcible
descriptions and medical details, – will help
to abate sickness and to destroy it.
196:25
Many a hopeless case of disease is induced by a single
post mortem examination, – not from infection nor from
contact with material virus, but from the fear of the
disease and from the image brought before the mind; it
is a mental state, which is afterwards outlined on the
body.
Pangs caused by the press
196:31
The press unwittingly sends forth many sorrows and
diseases among the human family. It does this by giv-
197:1
ing names to diseases and by printing long descriptions
which mirror images of disease distinctly in thought. A
new name for an ailment affects people like a
Parisian name for a novel garment. Every one
hastens to get it. A minutely described dis-
ease costs many a man his earthly days of comfort. What
a price for human knowledge! But the price does not ex-
ceed the original cost. God said of the tree of knowledge,
which bears the fruit of sin, disease, and death, "In the
day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."
Higher standard for mortals
197:11
The less that is said of physical structure and laws, and
the more that is thought and said about moral
and spiritual law, the higher will be the stand-
ard of living and the farther mortals will be re-
moved from imbecility or disease.
197:16
We should master fear, instead of cultivating it. It
was the ignorance of our forefathers in the departments
of knowledge now broadcast in the earth, that made them
hardier than our trained physiologists, more honest than
our sleek politicians.
Diet and dyspepsia
197:21
We are told that the simple food our forefathers ate
helped to make them healthy, but that is a mistake.
Their diet would not cure dyspepsia at this
period. With rules of health in the head
and the most digestible food in the stomach, there would
still be dyspeptics. Many of the effeminate constitutions
of our time will never grow robust until individual opin-
ions improve and mortal belief loses some portion of its
error.
Harm done by physicians
197:30
The doctor's mind reaches that of his patient. The
doctor should suppress his fear of disease, else his belief
in its reality and fatality will harm his patients even more
198:1
than his calomel and morphine, for the higher stratum of
mortal mind has in belief more power to harm man than
the substratum, matter. A patient hears the
doctor's verdict as a criminal hears his death‑
sentence. The patient may seem calm under it, but he is
not. His fortitude may sustain him, but his fear, which
has already developed the disease that is gaining the
mastery, is increased by the physician's words.
Disease depicted
198:9
The materialistic doctor, though humane, is an art-
ist who outlines his thought relative to disease, and then
fills in his delineations with sketches from text-
books. It is better to prevent disease from
forming in mortal mind afterwards to appear on the
body; but to do this requires attention. The thought of
disease is formed before one sees a doctor and before
the doctor undertakes to dispel it by a counter-irritant,
– perhaps by a blister, by the application of caustic or
croton oil, or by a surgical operation. Again, giving an-
other direction to faith, the physician prescribes drugs,
until the elasticity of mortal thought haply causes a
vigorous reaction upon itself, and reproduces a picture
of healthy and harmonious formations.
198:23
A patient's belief is more or less moulded and formed
by his doctor's belief in the case, even though the doctor
says nothing to support his theory. His thoughts and his
patient's commingle, and the stronger thoughts rule the
weaker. Hence the importance that doctors be Christian
Scientists.
Mind over matter
198:29
Because the muscles of the blacksmith's arm are
strongly developed, it does not follow that
exercise has produced this result or that a
less used arm must be weak. If matter were the cause
199:1
of action, and if muscles, without volition of mortal
mind, could lift the hammer and strike the anvil, it
might be thought true that hammering would enlarge
the muscles. The trip-hammer is not increased in size
by exercise. Why not, since muscles are as material as
wood and iron? Because nobody believes that mind is
producing such a result on the hammer.
199:8
Muscles are not self-acting. If mind does not move
them, they are motionless. Hence the great fact that
Mind alone enlarges and empowers man through its
mandate, – by reason of its demand for and supply of
power. Not because of muscular exercise, but by rea-
son of the blacksmith's faith in exercise, his arm becomes
stronger.
Latent fear subdued
199:15
Mortals develop their own bodies or make them sick,
according as they influence them through mortal mind.
To know whether this development is produced
consciously or unconsciously, is of less impor-
tance than a knowledge of the fact. The feats of the gym-
nast prove that latent mental fears are subdued by him.
The devotion of thought to an honest achievement makes
the achievement possible. Exceptions only confirm this
rule, proving that failure is occasioned by a too feeble
faith.
199:25
Had Blondin believed it impossible to walk the rope
over Niagara's abyss of waters, he could never have
done it. His belief that he could do it gave his thought‑
forces, called muscles, their flexibility and power which
the unscientific might attribute to a lubricating oil. His
fear must have disappeared before his power of putting
resolve into action could appear.
Homer and Moses
199:32
When Homer sang of the Grecian gods, Olympus was
200:1
dark, but through his verse the gods became alive in a
nation's belief. Pagan worship began with muscularity,
but the law of Sinai lifted thought into the
song of David. Moses advanced a nation to
the worship of God in Spirit instead of matter, and il-
lustrated the grand human capacities of being bestowed
by immortal Mind.
A mortal not man
200:8
Whoever is incompetent to explain Soul would be wise
not to undertake the explanation of body. Life is, always
has been, and ever will be independent of
matter; for life is God, and man is the idea
of God, not formed materially but spiritually, and not
subject to decay and dust. The Psalmist said: "Thou
madest him to have dominion over the works of Thy
hands. Thou hast put all things under his feet."
200:16
The great truth in the Science of being, that the real
man was, is, and ever shall be perfect, is incontrovertible;
for if man is the image, reflection, of God, he is neither
inverted nor subverted, but upright and Godlike.
200:20
The suppositional antipode of divine infinite Spirit
is the so-called human soul or spirit, in other words
the five senses, – the flesh that warreth against Spirit.
These so called material senses must yield to the infinite
Spirit, named God.
200:25
St. Paul said: "For I determined not to know any-
thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified."
(I Cor. ii. 2.) Christian Science says: I am determined
not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and
him glorified.
Chapter VIII
Footsteps Of Truth
Remember, Lord, the reproach of Thy servants; how I do bear in my
bosom the reproach of all the mighty people; wherewith Thine enemies
have reproached, O Lord; wherewith they have reproached the footsteps
of Thine anointed. – PSALMS.
Practical preaching
201:1
THE best sermon ever preached is Truth practised
and demonstrated by the destruction of sin, sickness,
and death. Knowing this and knowing too
that one affection would be supreme in us and
take the lead in our lives, Jesus said, "No man can serve
two masters."
201:7
We cannot build safely on false foundations. Truth
makes a new creature, in whom old things pass away
and "all things are become new." Passions, selfishness,
false appetites, hatred, fear, all sensuality, yield to spirit-
uality, and the superabundance of being is on the side
of God, good.
The uses of truth
201:13
We cannot fill vessels already full. They must first be
emptied. Let us disrobe error. Then, when
the winds of God blow, we shall not hug our
tatters close about us.
201:17
The way to extract error from mortal mind is to pour
in truth through flood-tides of Love. Christian perfec-
tion is won on no other basis.
201:20
Grafting holiness upon unholiness, supposing that sin
202:1
can be forgiven when it is not forsaken, is as foolish as
straining out gnats and swallowing camels.
The scientific unity which exists between God and man
must be wrought out in life-practice, and God's will must
be universally done.
Divine study
202:6
If men would bring to bear upon the study of the
Science of Mind half the faith they bestow upon the so‑
called pains and pleasures of material sense,
they would not go on from bad to worse,
until disciplined by the prison and the scaffold; but
the whole human family would be redeemed through
the merits of Christ, – through the perception and ac-
ceptance of Truth. For this glorious result Christian
Science lights the torch of spiritual understanding.
Harmonious life-work
202:15
Outside of this Science all is mutable; but immortal
man, in accord with the divine Principle of His being,
God, neither sins, suffers, nor dies. The days
of our pilgrimage will multiply instead of di-
minish, when God's kingdom comes on earth; for the
true way leads to life instead of to death, and earthly
experience discloses the finity of error and the infinite
capacities of Truth, in which God gives man dominion
over all the earth.
Belief and practice
202:24
Our beliefs about a Supreme Being contradict the
practice growing out of them. Error abounds where
Truth should "much more abound." We
admit that God has almighty power, is "a
very present help in trouble;" and yet we rely on a drug
or hypnotism to heal disease, as if senseless matter or err-
ing mortal mind had more power than omnipotent Spirit.
Sure reward of righteousness
202:31
Common opinion admits that a man may take cold in
the act of doing good, and that this cold may produce
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