“So am I, much! Death is such a mistake; and I haven’t a bit of use for it,” she continued. “It’s like making mistakes in music, or mathematics. Now when we make mistakes in those, we never stop to discuss them. We correct them. But, dear me! The world has nearly talked its poor old head off about the mistakes of sickness and death. It never seems to occur to the world that Jesus always associated sickness with sin. You know, the Rabbis of his day seem to have hit upon a great truth, although they didn’t make it really practical. They maintained that a sick man could not be healed of his diseases until all his sins had been forgiven. And so they attempted to forgive sins and make men clean by their elaborate ceremonies. But they missed the mark, too. And nobody got to the root of the difficulty until Jesus came. He forgave sin by destroying it completely. And that cured the disease that was the manifestation of sin. Now I ask, why do you, nearly two thousand years after his time, still do as the old Rabbis did, and continue to treat the body––the effect––instead of the mental cause? But,” looking down in meditation, “I suppose if you did that the people would cry, ‘He hath a devil!’ They thought I was a witch in Simití.”
“H’m!” returned the doctor. “Then you do not believe that disease is caused by microbes, I take it?”
“Disease caused by microbes? Yes, so it is. And the microbe? It is a manifestation of the human mind again. And, as with typhoid fever, diphtheria, and other diseases, the human mind applies its own cherished, ignorant beliefs in certain methods, and then renders innocuous its own manifestations, microbes. The human mind makes its own diseases, and then in some cases removes the disease, but still by human, material methods. Its reliefs are only temporary. At last it yields itself to its false beliefs, and then goes out in what it calls death. It is all a mental process––all human thought and its various 35 manifestations. Now why not get beyond microbes and reach the cause, even of them, the human mind itself? Jesus did. Paul did. Others have done so. Why do not you men of science do likewise?”
Doctor Morton himself took the chair which he had set out for the girl. “What you say,” he replied slowly, “is not new to me. But I can only answer that the world is not ready yet for the great change which you suggest.”
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “What cant! What mesmerism you are laboring under! Was the world ready for Jesus?”
“No. He came too soon. Events show that.”
“Well, then, would he be accepted to-day, if he had not come before?”
“I can not say. But––I think he would not.”
“And I quite agree with you,” she said firmly. “Now the world has doctored for more than four thousand years, despite the fact that health is not sold in bottle or pill form. Doctor, what does the history of all these centuries of drugging show you?”
He hesitated. Carmen waited a moment; then continued: