“Our concept of matter, which is now proven to be but a mental concept, built up out of false thought, points to mind as the real substance. Our concept of measurable space and distance is the direct opposite of the great truth that infinite mind is ever-present. Our concept of time is the opposite of infinity. It is but human limitation. Age is the opposite of eternity––and the old-age thought brings extinction. So, to every reality there is the corresponding unreality. The opposite of good is evil. If the infinite creative mind is good––and 79 we saw that by very necessity it must be so––then evil becomes an awful unreality, and is real only to the false thought which entertains or holds it. If life is real––and infinite mind must itself be life––then death becomes the opposite unreality. And, as Jesus said, it can be overcome. But were it real, no power, divine or human, could ever overcome or destroy it!”
“Seems to me,” remarked Haynerd dryly, “that our study so far simply goes to show, as Burke puts it, ‘what shadows we are and what shadows we pursue.’”
Hitt smiled. “When the world humiliates itself to the point that it will accept that, my friend,” he said, “then it will become receptive to truth.
“But now let us go a little further,” he went on. “The great Lamarck voiced a mighty fact when he said, ‘Function precedes structure.’ For by that we mean that the egg did not produce the bird, but the bird the egg. The world seems about to pass from the very foolish belief that physical structure is the cause of life, to the great fact that a sense of life produces the physical structure. The former crude belief enslaved man to his body. The latter tends to free him from such slavery.”
“You see, Doctor,” interrupted Carmen, “the brain which you were cutting up the other day did not make poor Yorick’s mind and thought, but his mind made the brain.”
The doctor smiled and shook a warning finger at the girl.
“The body,” resumed Hitt, “is a manifestation of the human mind’s activity. What constitutes the difference between a bird and a steam engine? This, in part: the engine is made by human hands from without; the bird makes itself, that is, its body, from within. So it is with the human body. But the ignorant human mind––ignorant per se––falls a slave to its own creation, the mental concept which it calls its physical body, and which it pampers and pets and loves, until it can cling to it no longer, because the mental concept, not being based on any real principle, is forced to pass away, having nothing but false thought to sustain it.”
“But now,” interposed Haynerd, who was again waxing impatient, “just what is the practical application of all this abstruse reasoning?”
“The very greatest imaginable, my friend,” replied Hitt. “A real thing is real forever. And so matter can not become non-existent unless it is already nothing! The world is beginning to recognize the tremendous fact that from nothing nothing can be made. Very well, since the law of the conservation of energy seems to be established as regards energy in toto, why, we must conclude that there is no such thing as annihilation. 80 And that means that there is no such thing as absolute creation! Whatever is real has always existed. The shadow never was real, and does not exist. And so creation becomes unfolding, or revelation, or development, of what already exists, and has always existed, and always will exist. Therefore, if matter, and all it includes as concomitants, evil, sin, sickness, accident, chance, lack, and death, is based upon unreal, false thought, then it can all be removed, put out of consciousness, by a knowledge of truth and a reversal of our accustomed human thought-processes.”
“And that,” said Carmen, “is salvation. It is based on righteousness, which is right-thinking, thinking true thoughts, and thinking truly.”