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GOD AND MAN

the senses or life and yet you will see they are different. Suppose you are ignorant of the effect of a charcoal fire. You sit down in a room, the heat affects the mind or matter; all this contains no intelligence. At last the life is disturbed, just as the cold would be and would wish to rid itself of the sensation of heat. The senses being attached to life become disturbed. Opinions enter which are like more coal and increase the heat or excitement. Reason which is another element of fire fans the flames till life and the senses are so affected that they will not remain. This is disease. Suppose I come in; the instant the heat affects my mind my wisdom communicates to my senses [consciousness] the cause and the remedy. My senses become composed, my wisdom directs my senses, and they act on the body; the door is opened, the trouble is explained, the patient is saved from his torment, his mind or opinion is destroyed, but his life is saved and his trouble is at an end. Opinions are the elements used to torment life or the senses. They contain no wisdom above the brute, but are matter and can be destroyed. All the opinions of the priests are condensed into a solid according to their belief, and although they cannot be seen by the natural eye, the eye of opinion can see them and lead the senses that are attached to the opinion to the locality where the beliefs are. For instance, the priests tell their hearers that there is another world separate from this. They give such a glowing account of it that their opinions like fuel set fire to the audience and a chemical change takes place; their minds are disturbed like mortar and their senses are affected by the opinions of the priests and an expedition is fitted out to go to this world, which is actually created by the priests' opinions. The minds are so disturbed that the life, losing its relish for this world, is persuaded to embark for the world of the priests' opinions, to which their thoughts are attached. Their senses are held between two opinions, not knowing what to do; this is called by the doctors “disease of the mind.” They, not knowing the cause of the trouble take the story of the patient, who also being ignorant, is ready to be deceived by the ignorance of the doctor. So the doctor, like the priest, gets up a false idea of disease and engrafts into the patient's belief a new idea of some disease which affects the body. Then he reasons till it takes root in the mind and comes forth in the image of its father. The life or senses are then attached and the thing is