Mrs. Eddy does not employ the term "subconscious" in her writings, but she uses the word "unconscious" and the expressions "latent belief," "latent error," "latent in thought," and other similar phrases. Here, as elsewhere, she proved to be a thinker far in advance of her time. Years before contemporary American thought had become fully conscious of the unconscious, she was spiritually equipped to fathom and to heal those thoughts in the minds of mortals which lie beneath the threshold of awareness. On page 168 of Science and Health she writes: "I have discerned disease in the human mind, and recognized the patient's fear of it, months before the so-called disease made its appearance in the body. Disease being a belief, a latent illusion of mortal mind, the sensation would not appear if the error of belief was met and destroyed by truth." And on the next page she states that she has also mentally discerned signs of healing before the patient himself was aware of it.
Commenting upon the "little book" in the hand of the angel of the Apocalypse, who stood with his right foot upon the sea and his left foot upon the earth, she asks (ibid., p. 559), "Did this same book contain the revelation of divine Science, the 'right foot' or dominant power of which was upon the sea,—upon elementary, latent error, the source of all error's visible forms?"
Jesus always handled the current belief. He cast out devils, because in his time devils were believed to be the cause of disease or deviant behavior. He did not concern himself with what would be the theory about certain diseases, epilepsy, for example, two thousand years hence, but healed and corrected contemporaneous thought.
