There are few topics of greater importance than that pertaining to primal cause; and certainly an understanding of none of them can exceed in value for humanity a knowledge of the source or origin of all reality. The so-called human mind is constantly dealing with what are known as secondary causes and their effects. Thus, for example, it is said that an apple falls to the ground from the tree on which it grew because of the pull of gravity upon it toward the center of the earth, thereby making gravity the cause of the phenomenon. But as to the why and the wherefore of gravity there is only theorizing. Assuming that gravity has acted as in the case cited, gravity itself must be presumed to be the effect of an antecedent cause. Examples innumerable of a similar nature could be given to show that mortal thought is continually associating effects with what are certainly not primary causes, but phenomena which are themselves dependent upon some precedent condition.
Everywhere and in all generations, the question has been asked by inquiring men whether it will ever be possible to know anything at all absolutely certain about primal cause. Is it possible, they have asked, to know something of the Being who has originated or caused the universe with all its activities? The question has been solved neither by natural science nor by human philosophy. Natural science leads thought to the atom or the molecule or the electron, hypothesizing all the while; and leaves the inquirer there, wondering whither the next step will lead him. It is true that each step in the reasoning of the natural scientist appears to be less material than the preceding one, in that his latest theory renders matter apparently less tangible to the corporeal senses. But that is about the utmost that can be said for his position. Human philosophy, likewise, has never been able, definitely, to establish primal cause as self-existent, self-creative, understandable, demonstrable being. It has failed to distinguish between primordial divine Mind's creation of spiritual ideas and the phenomena of the so-called human mind. That is to say, human philosophy has failed to distinguish between secondary cause (so called) and its phenomena and primal cause with its spiritual effects.
As soon as one commences the study of Christian Science he is carried straight to the beginning of things. He is not asked to contemplate the latest electronic theory of matter or to speculate on its possible relationship to the material senses; neither is he asked to follow the speculations of the various philosophical schools from or before Plato to the revolutionary teaching of Einstein as applied to modern philosophy today; rather is he brought at once face to face with the facts of real being, face to face with the primal cause of all reality, presented with statements of absolute Truth relating thereto. In other words, those who enter upon the study of Christian Science begin to learn the truth about divine Principle, which is at once the circumference and the center of being.
