ON page 103 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy, writing under the marginal heading "The genus of error," defines animal magnetism as "the specific term for error, or mortal mind." She further describes it as "the false belief that mind is in matter, and is both evil and good; that evil is as real as good and more powerful." And she adds an emphatic denial of this belief termed animal magnetism in its every phase.
Animal magnetism, then, as defined, comprises the sum total of the claims of error, of all suppositional beliefs arising from the lie that matter is substance, having life and intelligence. Its operation is hypnotism, or mesmerism, which would obscure vision, making the unreal appear as reality. It is the seeming antagonist, the adversary of spiritual truth, which postulates man as material, having material birth, maturity, and decline, going out in the belief of death. How apt, in view of this, is the expression "the genus of error"! Now genus is the class name, or order, of a series of objects. Applied, then, as our Leader uses it here, animal magnetism is the class name for every false belief, for all erroneous claims of a universe other than the spiritual universe, which God has created.
With the case so clearly stated by our Leader, the question inevitably arises, What are we to do about it? What has the Christian Scientist to do with this supposititious world of error included in the term "animal magnetism"? On page 450 of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy has answered this question for every student. "The Christian Scientist," she says, "has enlisted to lessen evil, disease, and death; and he will overcome them by understanding their nothingness and the allness of God, or good." How completely is our question answered! Our work is "to lessen evil, disease, and death;" that is, to destroy animal magnetism. How? By knowing it to be illusion, nothing; that is, by refusing to be mesmerized into accepting as reality that which is illusory. Because God, good, is All, there is no other reality; and we are positively assured that whatever is not good is not from God, hence is not real. The whole situation is so clearly elucidated in our Leader's writings that there is little reason for misunderstanding on the part of Christian Scientists.
