The enigmatical and self-contradictory explanations set forth in textbooks on the natural sciences sometimes arouse in the student a strong suspicion that they do not really explain at all. Thus until recently it was assumed in physics that the surrounding and omnipenetrating substance called ether was many times as rigid as steel, but that material objects could move through it without any friction whatever! And in physiology and psychology it is still taught that we obtain our knowledge by means of wires called nerves, which run through tiny holes into a dark box called a skull, there to be transformed, by a process which nobody can explain, into thoughts and feelings called smell, taste, touch, hearing, and sight.
Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, saw the inadequacy of the teachings of the sciences, and recognized that causation must be sought in God, Spirit, and that the reflection of this one and only cause must be seen as expressing itself in spiritual laws, not material. In Chapter VI of her textbook on Christian Science, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," she pays her respects to three great areas of human thought, "Science, Theology, Medicine." In masterly logic she has undermined for all time the pretensions of such doctrines as the theory of evolution, material heredity, and reliance on the mortal mind and senses, besides refuting the claims of conventional theology and medicine.
But Mrs. Eddy did far more than this. In a remarkable passage which may be found on page 22 of her book "Miscellaneous Writings," she asserts the fact that God, Spirit, is in no way confined to the three-dimensional world of the human senses. This is the quotation: "Christian Science translates Mind, God, to mortals. It is the infinite calculus defining the line, plane, space, and fourth dimension of Spirit."
