IT is recorded in the fifth chapter of Mark's Gospel that Jesus on one occasion approached a man possessed of "an unclean spirit." And the man, perceiving Jesus afar off, ran and worshiped him. Mrs. Eddy tells us that Jesus saw clearly "the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals" (Science and Health, p. 476), and he said: "Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit." Then he asked him, "What is thy name?" And the reply was: "My name is Legion: for we are many."
The writer was reared in a theological atmosphere and was taught the approved statements respecting a perfect creator of an imperfect creation—of God and fallen man. He was taught that the offspring of this man possessed a three-in-one identity: a mind, a material body, and a soul. This creature was conceived materially by man, mentally by man, and spiritually by God. He was then born, grew materially to maturity, thence to decay and death. From birth this man also grew mentally to maturity and thence to decay; but the soul of this remarkable orthodox creation supposedly did not increase in size or importance, and while at all times the soul was responsible for its future state, after death should overtake the material body, no way was provided whereby the soul could assume the responsibility and become active in its behalf, for God the All-wise, knowing aforetime the outcome of the struggle of the soul to save itself from the paradoxical end of "everlasting destruction," had also foreordained the fate that should overtake the spiritual part of man at the death of the body. The sentence of death upon the body, the prejudging of the soul, and the unaccountable disappearance of the mind at death—such was the foreordination of this copartnership creation of God and man.
Asked to accept this theory, the writer invariably put the question: "But what of the mind? You account for the soul and the body of man, by saving or damning the one and utterly destroying the other: but whence goes the mind of man?" After leaving college, where these questions were never answered, the writer entered upon the study of medicine. What little reverence for God this creedal teaching had left to him, was surely destroyed when the study of medicine had progressed a few months. Soon he learned that, no matter how deeply he searched for this elusive mind, supposedly resident in the body, no reliable trace of it could be found. He did find that the new-born infant was possessed of little if any mind, and little by little was brought out the fact that this creation became possessed of mind only by means of education. Thus an answer was partially arrived at to the question that theology had so signally failed to answer. This vaunted mind of man was but an accretion of education after all. While this could not be said to be satisfactory, still it at least accounted for the disappearance of the mind when dust returned to its own.
