University of Virginia Library

Beliefs illusive

The tobacco-user, eating or smoking poison for half a century, sometimes tells you that the weed preserves his health, but does this make it so? Does his assertion prove the use of tobacco to be a salu- brious habit, and man to be the better for it? Such in- stances only prove the illusive physical effect of a false belief, confirming the Scriptural conclusion concerning a man, "As he thinketh in his heart, so is he."

The movement-cure - pinching and pounding the poor body, to make it sensibly well when it ought to be in- sensibly so - is another medical mistake, resulting from the common notion that health depends on inert matter

instead of on Mind. Can matter, or what is termed matter, either feel or act without mind?