From time immemorial mankind has striven to preserve health and life in the body through the belief that man is mortal and material instead of permanent and spiritual. Until spiritually illumined by the sacred revelations of Christian Science that God, Spirit, is the only cause and creator and that man, whose Life is God, is the incorporeal idea of Mind, the human mind seems to believe that the well-being of the human family is at the mercy of unintelligent matter.
The prophet Isaiah could see how futile it was to look to matter to find man, for he said (2:22), "Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be accounted of?" According to the spiritual record of creation, found in the first chapter of Genesis, God pronounced good all that He had made and gave man, His image and likeness, dominion—spiritual power.
To believe in a material beginning is to believe that man is a fallen mortal and not the immortal offspring of God, and this erroneous concept of man and creation is the basis of all discord and dissolution. The belief that man is both material and spiritual, and that he must be held in the bondage and limitations of materiality until at some unknown future time he must pass through the experience called death in order to reach his perfect state of being, is the false doctrine of dualism. In the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, the exposure and denial of mortal mind's claim to life and intelligence is made with logic and spiritual discernment. We read (p. 275): "Matter has no life to lose, and Spirit never dies. A partnership of mind with matter would ignore omnipresent and omnipotent Mind. This shows that matter did not originate in God, Spirit, and is not eternal. Therefore matter is neither substantial, living, nor intelligent."
