In an age when the achievements of philosophical investigation and inventive genius are so wondrous, when the triumph of Mind over matter is witnessed to in so many ways, and the so-called civilization of the more advanced nations is rapidly supplanting the untutored life of the indigenous races, it is not surprising that human reason should come to be regarded by many as "the key to the kingdom,"—the means by which all problems are to be solved, all difficulties overcome, all ills relieved, so that the race may find itself and come into the fulness of its own. The repose of this confidence can but be disturbed, however, by the fact that intellectuality is not found to have any necessary affiliation with virtue, that gain in so-called rationality and in the control of material conditions is not infrequently attended by an increased indulgence of those appetites and impulses which indicate moral weakness and degeneracy, so that it becomes a serious question whether after all the asserted advance of civilization has been genuine or merely a seeming.
Furthermore, not only in its attendant results, but in its inherent nature, the human reason with all its promise has long since been declared to be vain. Well-nigh three centuries ago Gassendi, who was withal a champion of intellectual progress, protested against the dominating influence of the Aristotelian system of thought, on the ground that "logic is profitless for exact knowledge, because 'to know' means to know the cause of things, and the cause of things cannot be known by means of a syllogism; the syllogism, granting in its conclusion only what is already in the premise, instead of being a true demonstration, is in reality only a repetition." A century and a quarter later Immanuel Kant, one of the greatest thinkers of history, affirmed that "the greatest and perhaps the sole use of all philosophy and pure reason is after all purely negative . . . instead of discovering truth, it has only the modest merit of preventing error."
This dawning of right sense has become a brightening day in Christian Science, wherein it is seen that the one Mind is the source of all right ideas, all healing and redemptive thought, and that these ideas appear in consciousness apart from mortal modes or accompaniments, even as the light of the Shekinah illumined the Holy of Holies without lamp, wick, or oil. Human reason may serve us in applying and maintaining the standard of truth, so that the falsities of mortal sense may be uncovered and destroyed, but the truth itself is apprehended intuitionally; it is acquired through spiritual perception and is not the product of a reasoning process. It is not made up, it is, and however valuable the incidental service which our own rational thought or that of others may render us, God-with-us is the immediate source of all truth. This is "the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world." The Father of all is the Teacher of all.
