POPE wrote, "The proper study of mankind is man," but until the presentation of Christian Science by Mrs. Eddy the larger part of the world's study of mankind had not been man; it had been merely mankind. To her we owe the possibility of studying the real man, the highest expression of God, the ideal of divine Mind. When Christian Science enters our lives, it finds us with a concept of man which has been largely given to us in our most impressionable years, given to us as unquestionable fact in the nursery, in the school, and in the church. Thus mortals' concept of man, like their nationality, their language, and their religion, is early ingrafted into their thinking. Many people never have their religious beliefs challenged, and more never have their early bestowed beliefs concerning man brought into the light of investigation and divine logic. Nevertheless, while men may not be wholly or largely responsible for erroneous or limited conceptions of man before Truth governs their mental processes, yet they must be counted responsible for any failure to examine and perfect their thinking from that time on. This examination and correction must continue until the ascension from matter to Spirit is fully accomplished.
All that one has accepted as true about man needs to be examined in the light of divine reason as revealed in Christian Science. The human conceptions of man are based on the unreliable testimony of the material senses, and are largely believed today because they have gone so long unchallenged. Mankind's basis of thought for so long has been the five corporeal senses that it has been almost oblivious of that which, in Truth, is the real and only true sense —the spiritual sense. It is the five physical senses that present mankind; it is the spiritual sense that reveals the real man. It is the material senses that present the errors about man; it is the spiritual sense that gives us the truth about him. In the study of man nothing need be taken for granted. All may be traced to and tested by its cause. That which is scientifically real finds its source in the infinite good, divine Mind. That which does not stand this test cannot be counted absolutely real, that is, true and eternal.
As the basis of demonstration must always be absolute Christian Science, to admit the existence of evil or matter in any degree is merely to continue the old theological belief of a conflict between good and evil, with good possibly the ultimate victor, though that victory may be in a faraway eternity. So, in seeking the real man we must accept no quality for him that is not a quality of God, and those qualities which are in God must be reflected by man. It is not enough to study man as an abstraction, deducing what we think man might be; we must learn through divine Science what man really is, and then begin the demonstration of real being.
