"Error is human illusion, without personal identity or Principle, and has no existence save in mistaken human belief," and illusion is never reality. If illusion were reality, then it would no longer be illusion, but would be fact or Truth, and would contain none of the elements of error. Error, in and of itself, is absolutely nothing. It seems to be, but is not. It is absolutely without power or force in and of itself; and it appears to have either only when it is associated with human belief,—only when the human mind, so called, believing the lie of error (for every error is a lie) lends to the lie its own power. Thus the two become so associated that the borrowed power appears to the careless thinker to belong to error.
To illustrate: I am to go by cars to another city; my train leaves at nine; but error has told me that it leaves at ten; consequently I miss my train. Now error had no power to make me miss the train, only so far as I believed in it. Had I suspected error to be error, instead of believing it, I should have made investigation and learned the truth. The moment Truth appeared, error would have lost the only power it ever possessed (the power I myself gave it by believing it), and it would have been at once condemned to its real condition of powerless nothingness, would have had no control over me, and would have disappeared.
Error is the absence of Truth. The moment Truth appears error disappears. The old and familiar comparison of light and darkness is here exactly applicable. As stated by the physical scientists, darkness is absolutely nothing; it is only the absence of something. When light goes, darkness comes. It has no quality except such as it derives from the absence of light; it has no power over anything; it even has no existence of its own; it never replaces anything; it never drives away the light; but the presence of light always destroys darkness, solely by its presence. Error is also absolutely nothing, and only the absence of something. It is the darkness caused by the absence of the light of Truth. The child is afraid of the dark; but darkness has no power over the adult, who understands it. Adults are afraid of error in its countless forms, and cower in abject terror before it, giving it the dominion and authority of the beast in St. John's vision; but those who are enlightened by understanding laugh at these fears. They are as causeless as if one were afraid of his own shadow. When the light comes the darkness is no more darkness, and the child is no longer afraid. So also, when Truth comes error goes, and the adult is no longer afraid of his own imaginings. Truth casts out all error, just as absolutely and completely as light casts out darkness. Truth relieves us of our belief in error; and as the belief alone gave to error all its semblance of power, then, when the belief is gone, the power is gone also, and error stands in its naked powerlessness and its unqualified, absolute nothingness. It vanishes, just as the imagined ghost disappears with the coming light, and as absolutely leaves no trace behind.
