The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-10-07

man mile away, and five seconds after you have heard your sound he hears his sound-a new and special creation within his consciousness. And so there is no sweetness in the sugar bowl; the sugar does not taste itself. The bowl does not taste the sugar. There is no sweetness unless that sen sation is born in some consciousness that tastes the sugar. The vapor of the sunset cloud has no sense of be- ing crimson and gold until some con sciousness transmutes ether vibra- tions into mental states of light and color, where is the sunset glory? And so we might go on through the entire range of the sense, finding that the world which we know im- mediately is a mental world, a world which each mind reconstructs out Of cipher messages which come through the senses, run blindly along the nerves and then as by d miracle evoke a consciousness which interprets them into something no more re- sembling nerve or brain vibrations than Shakespeare's Hamlet" resem- bles the shaking of a bag of marbles. But does this mean that the mystic operator, Consciousness, Interpreting these cipher messages, creates his own universe? That there is no reality be- yond himself and his ideas? Some thinkers have tried to maintain such position getting unity by reducing all reality to the ego or conscious self and its states of consciousness But such thoroughgoing subjective ldealism of course involves the ab- surdly impossible conclusion that the subjective philosopher is himself the one and only existing being; every thing else-sun, moon and stars, the earth and all that dwell therein being but the weavings of his private thought; even what seem to be other human beings giving signs of con- sciousness and will like his own, are only states of his consciousness, illu- sions peopling his solitary dream, Mrs. Eddy Is, part of the time, in her book, fumbling with this subjective idealism and once at least she even seems to take kindly to the conclusion that she is the only existing reality, for she prints after the title page of Science and Health" in company with words from St. John and Shakes peare the following anonymous stan ga:
 T, I, I, itself,
 The inside and outside, the what and the why,
 The when and the where, the low and the high,
 All I, I, I, I itself, l."
 But 1t would not be fair to Mrs Eddy to suggest that solipsism is hei prevailing mood for though in the Boston Mother Temple she has al lowed her words and name to be in scrlbed around the base of the dome on a level with the words and names of Jesus and of Paul, and although she believes herself to be slnless anC | cot existent with God and the bearer of a revelation which is essential tC the race and without which the New Testament itself is insufficient, she ha, no thought of claiming to be the only being in the world Her prevailing position must be called a kind of theo' | logical idealism which out-Berkeley; Berkeley and of which we shall speal again in it's religious aspects Suffice i
 to say now that in the name of thi: idealism she makes the needless an( Illogical claim that what is called tho physical universe Is only an illusion of human consciousness; that 1t has no more objective existence than ( dream. It Is just here that Mrs. Eddy parts company with all true metapys
 les and all sane ideallsm. Although know immediately only my owr states of consciousness, l am obliged to recognize some reality beyond those states of consciousness which evokes them and sis interpreted by them This reality I know to be independent of my mind and yet since my mint can interpret It's messages I am conf. dent that It must exist 1T some mind beyond my owr to which my own Is akin The sunset glory which the clouds cannot know is born in my con sciousness; I believe that it Is borr likewise in the consciousness of other: who receive the same cipher message around me, but l cannot believe taa' | the universe is stranger to tha consciousness of glory except as ms | fellow mortals and I behold 1t. Al Infinite Mind rejolces in that splendoi as He creates 1t and flashes it's secre lcode to my mind, to the universe ot minds--and because we partake O. His likeness We can recreate His mes sage and share in His joy. To tht understanding mind, then, the physi
 cal universe Is mighty picture-lan guage, wondrous symbolism cease l lessly created by the Infinite Spirit and the true scientist and true meta
 physician alike as they interpret thi
 language of nature can cry with Rep
 Ter q think thy thoughts after thee
 o God!" The metaphysician an' scientist both recognize that beyont
 the mind of man there is this myster
 ious order of the universe common
 to all. It does not change any of tn
 finite facts of the scientists eXperienc
 nor any of the facts of our daily Tiff
 because the metaphysician shows tha this extra mental order could have n
 existence or meaning apart from tn
 Infinite Mind. Science itself Is comin
 to see that an atom as minute par
 ticle of stuff, "the smallest possibl
 particle of matter" is a fgment c
 the imagination. There can be n
 smallest possible particle of matte
 for critical thought, for, however sma
 if it has extension lat all, the partlcl
 can be divided and its parts again d
 vlded and so on to inf1nity Thougt
 can never reach any ultimate unit C