Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Tennyson's lines are unquestionably famous, but the sentiments expressed should be questioned. They would be a poor guide in most situations. And in the deepest sense we are impelled by our very nature to reason and probe the realities of being. Without this desire to learn and know, progress would be unrealized.
Another quotation is familiar to the Christian Scientist: "Reason is the most active human faculty."Science and Health, p. 327; The author, Mrs. Eddy, who founded the Christian Science movement, was an independent thinker, and expected much mental activity from those who followed her. How grateful we can be that as students of Christian Science we are not counseled to follow blindly the authority of church dogma but to reason and seek our answers on the basis of the allness of God, good, and man made in His image and likeness! "For right reasoning there should be but one fact before the thought, namely, spiritual existence,"p. 492; Mrs. Eddy tells us. We find that from this reasoning we are able to prove the presence of God and to demonstrate with authority the presence of good in our own experience.
