Now the question to settle is this, can a lie act upon a person who believes it so as to make him sick? No one will deny that statement I think. Nothing then produces something, unless a lie is something, and if it is where does it start from? To me the lie and the effect are both nothing. So when I sit by a sick person I come in contact with what they call “something.” This something frightens them, and another “something” is produced which they express by aches and pains, and other bad feelings. All these they think come from what they call disease. To me this something that they call disease is a lie which they believe, and their aches and pains are the expressions of their fears, and are like moans of a criminal sentenced to be hung or shot. Now comes the process of vaccination, or conversion, which is getting them out of one lie into another. The doctor introduces his opinion like virus which being received into the mind, a change is produced, and if his arguments are heeded, a milder disease is brought forth in the new graft, and finally the person is carried to that state of mind called “safe.” The priest goes through the same process. First he affirms his belief till the people become alarmed. He then introduces his opinion as a means of safety, and when this is received the mind is quieted, and this is conversion. The world has been humbugged by these two classes till the sick are tired of life; their substance is devoured; their fields of happiness are laid waste, and every kind of enjoyment destroyed. While the people are in this state, another swarm of locusts come upon them to get what is left. These are the political demagogues, the second growth that always springs up after the others get the mind troubled and ready to be affected. These parties are the scourges that pursue society as it passes through the wilderness of error to the land of happiness and science. This journey that science has been traveling is dotted with little opinions where Wisdom has cleared up the wilderness and burned up the error. Wisdom never stops; it continues, and has now reached the wilderness of disease, and every tree that brings not forth good fruit will be hewn down by the axe of Science and burned up by the fire of Truth.
MIND AND DISEASE
I have often spoken of the word mind as something which I call matter. I use this term from the fact that man cannot conceive of wisdom except as attached to matter, although
