DOMINION being God-bestowed, it is our spiritual and inalienable right and duty to exercise it, claiming freedom from material beliefs and influences which would hold us in bondage.
Nothing, perhaps, is more reassuring and satisfying than the correct sense of dominion. But in our endeavor to demonstrate dominion, it is well to make sure that we have a correct sense of it. God's man, who fully represents divine Mind, has dominion over "all the earth;" but the demonstration of this fact does not mean domination over one's fellow men. From the standpoint of Truth, all are created equal in the sight of God. From this it must follow that for one to attempt to exercise dominion over another through the counterfeit sense of personal power, would be to pervert the might which belongs by reflection to God's man. Again, submission to any perversion of true dominion places the victim in the plight to which our beloved Leader, Mrs. Eddy, refers on page 485 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" thus: "If thought yields its dominion to other powers, it cannot outline on the body its own beautiful images, but it effaces them and delineates foreign agents, called disease and sin."
The attempt to exercise personal domination over another and, on the other hand, the tendency to submit to such domination are equally demoralizing. When groups of people are assembled together it is not long, perhaps, until a dominant thought begins to assert itself. Indeed, it seldom occurs that two people can be in each other's company for any length of time without a certain tendency to domination appearing on the part of one or the other. Consciously or unconsciously, the aggressive mentality attempts to control. Mrs. Eddy has given a sharp rebuke to both the perpetrator and the victim of this condition when she says in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 119), "We are responsible for our thoughts and acts; and instead of aiding other people's devices by obeying them,—and then whining over misfortune,—rise and overthrow both."
