An analysis of physical phenomena shows that color, hardness, and the various other qualities which seem to belong to matter,—in fact which are relied upon to furnish the only evidence that matter exists as an entity,—are mental concepts. Mrs. Eddy calls attention to this fact on page 6 of "Rudimental Divine Science," where she quotes an American astronomer as saying that "'color is in us,' not 'in the rose;' and he adds that this is not 'any metaphysical subtlety,' but a fact, 'almost universally accepted, within the last few years, by physicists.'" To illustrate: It is the teaching of modern physics that we experience color sensations not because things are actually colored, but because the optic nerve is excited in a particular way by vibrations in an invisible medium termed the ether.
And so with all the impressions received through the senses; while the avenues of communication vary, the process in general is the same. Furthermore, under certain conditions of impressionability, sensations which are ordinarily associated with an objective environment are experienced independent of the external factor; and where the illusion is complete, as it frequently is in dreams and other states, the mental images seem to the receptive consciousness to be objectified in the form of a physical environment quite as real and substantial as the world which is cognized in the normal waking state.
The essential factor in transactions of both these descriptions is suggestion, the difference being that in the one case certain intermediary agencies are involved which are not recognized in the other. Would not the fact that the effects are similar in both cases seem to indicate that the suggestive processes spring, in the last analysis, from a common source? We perceive that communications which are transmitted by means, of artificial human codes and contrivances have a mental origin because of the response which they awaken in our thought. Is it not reasonable, then, to infer that the whole realm of sensuous existence has a mental basis of some sort? Such, indeed, is the conclusion toward which contemporary scholarship is rapidly tending, a conclusion which has been most aptly epitomized by Professor Ostwald in the statement that "matter is a thing of thought, which we have constructed for ourselves rather imperfectly to represent what is permanent in the change of phenomena."
