I couldn’t figure out why I felt as though I was stalling, as if a heavy, invisible blanket were keeping me earthbound and encumbered. Life felt dark and my thoughts seemed sluggish.
Then I came across this startling statement by Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer of the universal, divine law of Christian healing: “The mild forms of animal magnetism are disappearing, and its aggressive features are coming to the front. The looms of crime, hidden in the dark recesses of mortal thought, are every hour weaving webs more complicated and subtle. So secret are the present methods of animal magnetism that they ensnare the age into indolence, and produce the very apathy on the subject which the criminal desires” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 102).
I was familiar with the author’s definition of animal magnetism: “As named in Christian Science, animal magnetism or hypnotism is the specific term for error, or mortal mind. It is the false belief that mind is in matter, and is both evil and good; that evil is as real as good and more powerful” (Science and Health, p. 103). But when I looked up indolence, alarm bells went off. It means “inaction or want of exertion of body or mind, proceeding from love of ease or aversion to toil” (Noah Webster, American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828).
