Materialism grades the human species as rising from
matter upward. How then is the material species main-
172:9 tained, if man passes through what we call death and
death is the Rubicon of spirituality? Spirit can form
no real link in this supposed chain of material being.
172:12 But divine Science reveals the eternal chain of existence
as uninterrupted and wholly spiritual; yet this can be
realized only as the false sense of being disappears.
Degrees of development
172:15 If man was first a material being, he must have passed
through all the forms of matter in order to become man.
If the material body is man, he is a portion of
172:18 matter, or dust. On the contrary, man is the
image and likeness of Spirit; and the belief that there is
Soul in sense or Life in matter obtains in mortals, /alias/
172:21 mortal mind, to which the apostle refers when he says
that we must "put off the old man."
Identity not lost
What is man? Brain, heart, blood, bones, etc., the
172:24 material structure? If the real man is in the material
body, you take away a portion of the man when
you amputate a limb; the surgeon destroys
172:27 manhood, and worms annihilate it. But the loss of a limb
or injury to a tissue is sometimes the quickener of manli-
ness; and the unfortunate cripple may present more no-
172:30 bility than the statuesque athlete, - teaching us by his
very deprivations, that "a man's a man, for a' that."
When man is man
When we admit that matter (heart, blood, brain, acting
173:1 through the five physical senses) constitutes man, we fail
to see how anatomy can distinguish between
173:3 humanity and the brute, or determine when
man is really /man/ and has progressed farther than his
animal progenitors.
Individualization
173:6 When the supposition, that Spirit is within what it
creates and the potter is subject to the clay,
is individualized, Truth is reduced to the level
173:9 of error, and the sensible is required to be made manifest
through the insensible.
What is termed matter manifests nothing but a material
173:12 mentality. Neither the substance nor the manifestation
of Spirit is obtainable through matter. Spirit is positive.
Matter is Spirit's contrary, the absence of Spirit. For
173:15 positive Spirit to pass through a negative condition
would be Spirit's destruction.