m the action
of mortal thought."

"Inflammation, hemorrhages, tubercles, decompositions are all dream
shadows," "Man is the same after, as before, a bone is broken or a head
chopped off."

But as to who invented the idea of pain and whence came the superstition
that we must have lungs to breathe and that the heart is necessary to
life, Mrs. Eddy maintains a discreet silence. Sin, sickness, and death,
she says, are beliefs which originated in mortal mind. And how and when
did mortal mind originate? Mortal mind does not exist, she answers,
therefore it had no origin. This reasoning satisfies her; she believes
it perfectly adequate.

It is not only the diseased body which is to be disregarded and put out
of mind, but all hygienic precautions. Mrs. Eddy particularly objects to
diets, and she says that one food is as good as another. God gave man
"dominion not only over the fish in the sea, but over the fish in the
stomach also," she once said.

There is no such thing as fatigue: "You would not say that a wheel is
fatigued; and yet the body is just as material as the wheel. If it were
not for what the human mind says of the body, the body would never be
weary, any more than the inanimate wheel."

Mrs. Eddy denies that physical exercise strengthens the muscles.
"Because the muscles of the blacksmith's arm are strongly developed, it
does not follow that exercise has produced this result, or that a
less-used arm must be weak.... _The trip-hammer is not increased in size
by exercise._ Why not, since muscles are as material as wood and iron?"

Constant bathing, Mrs. Eddy says, received a "useful rebuke from Jesus'
precept, 'Take no thought ... for the body,' We must beware of making
clean merely the outside of the platter."

_A Sensationless Body the Goal of Existence_

"A sensationless body," Mrs. Eddy says, is the ultimate hope of
Christian Science. Since insensibility to pain is the ultimate good
which her system of philosophy offers, it is natural that she should
often point us to the lower forms of animal life for our exemplars. "The
conditions of life become less imperative in lower organisms, or where
there is less mind and belief on this subject." She points out hopefully
that certain marine animals multiply their species by self-division.
"The less mind there is manifested in matter, the better. When the
unthinking lobster loses his claw, it grows again." If we but believed
that matter has no sensation, "then