Mrs. Eddy's efforts to explain what she calls "mortal mind" give us an even better insight into her mentality. Though constantly denouncing mortal mind as the source of all human ills, the author of Christian Science makes no serious attempt to account for its origin. The fundamentals of Christian Science as expounded by its author are summed up in the following statements:—

God is All in All.

God is Good, God is Mind.

God Spirit, being all, nothing is matter.

Life, God, omnipotent good deny death, evil, sin, disease (p. 113).

The important deduction which the founder of Christian Science draws from these assertions is that sin, suffering, sickness, and death do not exist, since there is no room for them in God, who is All in All, or in a universe where Mind is the sole reality and "Nothing is matter." Our experience and our senses may testify to the contrary, but, replies Mrs. Eddy, "I find that God is true, and every (mortal) man a liar" (p. 113).

In the opinion of Christian Scientists, that ought to end the discussion. "God is true," never mind what men may say. But what is the proof that Mrs. Eddy is speaking for the Deity? Calvin and Mohammed too claimed to speak for the Deity.

If God is the All, whence comes mortal mind? The All plus mortal mind would give us more than the All. God cannot be the all unless he is immortal and mortal mind at the same time. It is true that Mrs. Eddy denies reality to mortal mind. By mortal mind she means false beliefs about God and man. But how did false beliefs originate in a universe where God or Good is the only reality?

Mrs. Eddy's efforts to make room for mortal mind in her perfect world are really amusing, as will be seen by what follows.

Man is defined as "God's spiritual idea, individual, perfect, eternal" (p. 115). She explains further that, while man is not God, he is nevertheless made in God's image, and is therefore God-like. The distinction between God and man, according to Mrs. Eddy, is one of quantity and not of quality. Jesus Christ was not God, she writes; he was only "the ideal of God, now and for ever, here and everywhere" (p. 361). It is true Jesus said, "I and my father are one"; but, explains Mrs. Eddy, what is meant is one in quality, not in quantity. Jesus was God in the sense that a drop of water is the ocean, or a ray of light is the sun—in essence, not in size. In that sense man too is God, or a little god. Both man and Jesus possess all the qualities of divinity, but in limited proportions.

"The science of being," our prophetess goes on to say, "reveals man as perfect, even as the Father is perfect, because the Soul and Mind of the spiritual man is God" (p. 302), but in quality only, since "man is in a degree as perfect as the Mind that forms him" (p. 337). It follows that if man were God-like in quantity as well as in quality—that is, if he were not undersized or underweighted spiritually, there would have been no mortal mind, and therefore no sin or sickness in the world. But who clipped man's divinity, or made him an underling? In a perfect world how does man happen to be a dwarf?

Forgetting her own statement, that man is not so "bulky" as God, Mrs. Eddy insists that, as there is no error or sickness in God, there can be none in man, who is "God's spiritual idea." Yet, in order to justify Christian Science healing, she is compelled to make a further distinction between God and man. God is one, but there are two kinds of men—the spiritual and the mortal, and it is the latter who need the high-priced services of healers.

"God is not corporeal... mortals are corporeal" (p. 116).

If we ask Mrs. Eddy how man could possess a body and yet be "the reflection of God," who is incorporeal, she replies that this body of which she speaks is only a make-believe body; the real man is all soul, as is the Deity. "The description of man as both material and spiritual... is the Pandora box from which all ills have gone forth. Matter is a fiction" (pp. 170-1). From which it follows that man is as incorporeal as God; but the former thinks he has a body, and hence the sufferings from which the Deity is immune. "Mistaking his origin and nature, man believes himself to be combined matter and spirit" (p. 171). This, Mrs. Eddy considers, is as great an absurdity as to think of Christ as both God and Devil (Belial and Christ). How, then, did man come to have a body? He has none; he has only come to think he has one. And how did that happen? "The human mortal mind, by an inevitable perversion, makes all things start from the lowest." That is the way, according to the author of Science and Health, in which man came to believe in matter. This false belief is "mortal mind" (pp. 172-89), the Dragon which the St. George of New England offers to slay for what she considers a moderate price.

Let it be observed that Mrs. Eddy attributes the existence or the belief in the existence of "mortal mind" to the "inevitable perversion" of the human mind. Mark the use of the word "inevitable." Does she mean that "mortal mind"—that is to say, sin, suffering, and death—were predestined? If she does not mean that, what made man's departure from truth, or his "perversion," inevitable? Was there another power, greater than the All, who pulled man down into error? And how can Christian Science, if it could not prevent the "perversion" which called into existence the worst of all as well as the parent of all diseases—"mortal mind"—be a remedy against the innumerable ills which flow from it?

In pronouncing "mortal mind" or the "perversion" which called it into existence inevitable, Mrs. Eddy has virtually created a power greater than her "All in All," since the latter could not prevent the catastrophe.

Once more: the reply that man is God-like in every respect except in size, and that the body is a myth, does not help Mrs. Eddy's argument in the least. Real or unreal, the human body, or the belief in it, which causes so much suffering, should have no place in a system founded upon the dogmatic declaration that all is Mind, and all is Good, and all is God. The question remains: Why did Mrs. Eddy make room in this perfect universe for the serpent—mortal mind? As already suggested, without this false belief in materiality Christian Science would have been a useless discovery. Mrs. Eddy was debarred by her creed from admitting the existence of matter; hence she compromised on "a belief in matter," which works just as great a havoc as real matter. This arrangement has given to her army of Christian Science practitioners many (imaginary) ills to heal. Like Don Quixote, Christian Scientists to-day go forth to do battle, even though for enemies they have nothing more formidable than windmills. Physicians treat what they believe to be real maladies; Christian Scientists combat maladies which they say do not exist—that is to say, they fight phantoms.

Not only does the author of Science and Health utterly fail, as all metaphysicians before her have failed, to account for the origin of evil or mortal mind, in a universe created and governed by Infinite Goodness, but her doctrine that man, like the Deity, is free from sickness, etc., involves her in new contradictions. For example, on page 204 (1910 edition) Mrs. Eddy says that "in Christian Science it can never be said that man has a mind of his own, distinct from God, the ALL-Mind"; and more than once she has asserted that man "has neither birth nor death" (p. 244). Of course, this is no more than a theory; but, even as such, Mrs. Eddy makes only a limited application of it—that is to say, she does not follow her theory to its logical consequences. If man has no mind of his own, but is a replica of the Divine mind, why did the Deity make so many copies of himself? Was this self-multiplication of the Divine mind from necessity or from choice? If the former, then necessity was greater than the Deity; if the latter, then man was an accident, since the Deity could just as well not have created him at all, being free to do as he pleased. And if man is a copy of the Deity, why did He reproduce himself more freely among the inferior races—the blacks and the yellows—than among the white peoples?

Again, if man has no mind distinct from the Divine, the All-Mind, he ought to have all the attributes of God. God is painless, sinless, deathless; and so is man, according to Mrs. Eddy. But why stop there? God is omniscient; is man omniscient too? Then why does he go to school? God is almighty; is man almighty? Then why does he have to use tools or ask for help? God is omnipresent; why is man dependent upon the means of transportation to go from place to place? How, then, does man, who is not distinct from the All-Mind—God, come to possess only one or two of the Divine attributes?