What is termed matter, being unintelligent, cannot say,
"I suffer, I die, I am sick, or I am well." It is the so-
210:27 called mortal mind which voices this and ap-
pears to itself to make good its claim. To
mortal sense, sin and suffering are real, but immortal
210:30 sense includes no evil nor pestilence. Because immortal
sense has no error of sense, it has no sense of error; there
fore it is without a destructive element.
211:1 If brain, nerves, stomach, are intelligent, - if they talk
to us, tell us their condition, and report how they feel, -
211:3 then Spirit and matter, Truth and error, commingle
and produce sickness and health, good and evil, life and
death; and who shall say whether Truth or error is the
211:6 greater?
Matter sensationless
The sensations of the body must either be the sensa-
tions of a so-called mortal mind or of matter. Nerves
211:9 are not mind. Is it not provable that Mind is
not /mortal/ and that matter has no sensation?
Is it not equally true that matter does not appear in the
211:12 spiritual understanding of being?
The sensation of sickness and the impulse to sin seem
to obtain in mortal mind. When a tear starts, does not
211:15 this so-called mind produce the effect seen in the lachry-
mal gland? Without mortal mind, the tear could not
appear; and this action shows the nature of all so-called
211:18 material cause and effect.
It should no longer be said in Israel that "the fathers
have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set
211:21 on edge." Sympathy with error should disappear. The
transfer of the thoughts of one erring mind to another,
Science renders impossible.
Nerves painless
211:24 If it is true that nerves have sensation, that matter has
intelligence, that the material organism causes the eyes to
see and the ears to hear, then, when the body
211:27 is dematerialized, these faculties must be lost,
for their immortality is not in Spirit; whereas the fact
is that only through dematerialization and spiritualiza-
211:30 tion of thought can these faculties be conceived of as
immortal.
Nerves are not the source of pain or pleasure. We
212:1 suffer or enjoy in our dreams, but this pain or pleasure
is not communicated through a nerve. A tooth which has
212:3 been extracted sometimes aches again in belief, and the
pain seems to be in its old place. A limb which has been
amputated has continued in belief to pain the owner. If
212:6 the sensation of pain in the limb can return, can be pro-
longed, why cannot the limb reappear?
Why need pain, rather than pleasure, come to this mor-
212:9 tal sense? Because the memory of pain is more vivid
than the memory of pleasure. I have seen an unwitting
attempt to scratch the end of a finger which had been cut
212:12 off for months. When the nerve is gone, which we say
was the occasion of pain, and the pain still remains, it
proves sensation to be in the mortal mind, not in matter.
212:15 Reverse the process; take away this so-called mind instead
of a piece of the flesh, and the nerves have no sensation.