It is not surprising that Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, should incisively indicate that such an inconsistency as age has no place in Science, by the emphatic statement in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 246), "Never record ages." In the same paragraph are other arresting statements: "Chronological data are no part of the vast forever. Time-tables of birth and death are so many conspiracies against manhood and womanhood."
The fallacies of mortal mind are nowhere more apparent than in its beliefs about what it calls age, and at no time has there been such persistent emphasis on this age belief as at present. Included among mortal mind's irrationalities, unquestioningly accepted by mankind, is the belief that a tiny portion of something called time can have amazing effects. On one certain day, for instance, a person may be too young to vote, no matter how long prior to that date he or she may have been well-balanced in judgment, fine in character, and otherwise adequately prepared. With one revolution of the earth a new calendar day appears—a birthday—and this person has "become of age" and is considered able to vote, although what has taken place to establish this sudden new ability was of an astronomical nature and had not in the slightest degree altered the character or ability possessed by that one on the preceding day. And conversely one seemingly totally unfit in every way to vote, suddenly, by the turning of the earth on its axis, is considered of age and a qualified voter.
At the other end of this peculiar scale of measure of mortal mind's concept of life and its appurtenance, age, is a thing called age limit, over which line of demarcation a person is considered unemployable or ready for retirement. Thus, one day a person of acknowledged ability, productively carrying on in business or actively and successfully engaged in a career of great benefit to all mankind, is, by nothing more than an imaginary spot in time called midnight, suddenly considered incapable of doing that which he is demonstrating himself competent to do.
