A great service to the cause of progress in the affairs of the world, individually and collectively, was rendered when Mrs. Eddy disclosed the claim of animal magnetism, or mesmerism, that it can becloud the non alert mind so that it fails to recognize opportunities or is insensitive to the need for creative and expanded thinking. The thought that is covered by a pale cast of complacency is not the thought that discerns the needs of the times and explores solutions for individual or international problems.
An example of how one's degree of alertness will operate either to hold him in bondage or to free him for greater achievement may be found in mankind's dealing with water. For centuries the people of the world watched kettles of water boil but thought only in very limited terms of how boiling water could be used. Then, some two hundred years ago, James Watt saw the same phenomenon; but to his alert thinking the potential of steam as a source of power, together with a more effective method of tapping that power, became apparent. Thus, with one individual's inspired, dynamic thinking came a great step forward in the affairs of individuals and the world, an incalculable stimulus to that movement of awakening known as the industrial revolution.
If Watt's vision and practical work in the derivative field of human invention brought in its wake a greater freedom from drudgery and increased men's material productivity, what of Mrs. Eddy's vision and work, unprecedented since Christ Jesus, in the field of Spirit and its fundamental laws? Through the revelation of divine power our Leader exposed the mesmeric claims of evil, and in the textbook, Science and Health, she shows the way to gain victory over them, unshackling men's potentialities in the spiritual field. No longer need the past be taken as the straight jacket for the future. Outmoded ways of thinking and acting need not form a bar to new procedures, new solutions, and new mental horizons.
