It is deeply significant that the opening paragraph of the chapter, Science of Being, beginning on page 268 of Science and Health, contains reference both to the thought liberation of the age of mechanical invention and to the simultaneous entrance of woman into the arena of general inquiry for a more metaphysical explanation and adjustment of the problems of existence. "Materialistic hypotheses," Mrs. Eddy says, "challenge metaphysics to meet in final combat. In this revolutionary period, like the shepherd-boy with his sling, woman goes forth to battle with Goliath."
Mechanical invention is simply a concrete manifestation on the human plane of the truth that Mind is unfettered by matter. The momentum of this increasing liberation of thought is slowly but steadily rolling back the deep materialism which fastened upon mortal man the curse, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground." The annulment of the curse of hard servitude upon corporeal man has its inevitable accompaniment in the dissolution of the seeming necessity of burden-bearing and pain which the material concept of being laid upon corporeal woman. The present age therefore witnesses woman entering almost every department of the world's activities as a natural result of this unfolding freedom of the human mind. That there remains here and there some opposition to woman's full emancipation, simply measures the materialism which has yet to be destroyed. The slow ages record much advancement on the human plane, but the spiritual cause of these forward steps must be understood before the belief of inequality will wholly cease from manifestation.
In the Science of being mortal man and mortal woman do not appear. Masculine and feminine qualities of Mind constitute generic man, the compound reflection of God. In Genesis we read: "Male and female created he them," and man, complete and undivided, was given dominion. From this basis of absolute truth it is evident that all the woes of the human family have originated in a false concept of the spiritual idea, God's likeness. It was in the allegorical account of an unreal creation that there arose the necessity of describing masculine and feminine excellences as separate, with the latter subordinate to the former. Mind's compound idea was misconceived by an illusive, dualistic belief in a material man and woman. The spiritual concept of equality and oneness was ruptured by a mortal classification of greater and lesser. Masculine superiority and tyranny presupposed feminine weakness and submission. Burden-bearing on the one side counterbalanced arduous toil on the other.
