IN SEARCH OF TRUTH 141 



stood in the streets of Los Angeles, each to take his turn in buying its 

 town lots. And the people who bought these lots were guided in one 

 way or another by what they termed their ' common sense.' The sense 

 of great wealth was in the air, and even the wisest were carried away 

 by it. ' The millionaire of a day ' takes the breath of his brother 

 millionaires. 



" At Denver not long ago a man insisted that he had the gift of 

 healing. A wild hermit from the plains; some called him crazy and 

 some called him a prophet. But the gift he had, or seemed to have, 

 and thousands of sick people and well crowded around him to be 

 touched and healed. He could not touch them all so he blessed their 

 handkerchiefs, and his power passed over to them. Men and women 

 whose ills gallons of patent medicines had failed to assuage were healed 

 at once by these pieces of soiled cloth. And testimonials such as they 

 had once written for these same patent medicines, they now freely 

 wrote for him. 



" But, after all, is there such a thing as disease ? Surely man 

 e made in the image of God ' is made in the image of perfection, and 

 what is perfect can not be marred or destroyed. May not disease be 

 the greatest of illusions? May not all pain be a nightmare dream 

 from which we should escape if we were once awakened? 



" Many a school of healing has been based in one way or another 

 on these propositions. In a hundred different ways at a hundred dif- 

 ferent times men and women have found that they could heal pain by 

 the suggestion that pain does not exist. If pain is disease, then shall 

 we not heal all diseases in this way? But some say that pain is not 

 a disease, only a warning that disease is present or coming. Pain is 

 the signal that something is going wrong in the mechanism of the 

 human body. The signal may be unnoticed it is claimed. We then 

 feel no pain but the injury remains, for it is the cause of the pain and 

 not the pain itself. By persistently turning the mind away from these 

 signals of distress sent up by the bodily organs, we may come at last 

 to be incapable of receiving them. We are then free from pain, and 

 our minds may be filled with a sweet serenity very satisfactory to our- 

 selves. Now, which of these is true? Are we ill when we feel pain, 

 well when we do not? Or do we feel pain because we are ill and does 

 the illness pass when our feeling is gone ? May it not be true that this 

 is a dangerous and selfish serenity ? If it does not mean the checking 

 of disease, but only the closing of our eyes to its ravages, then have we 

 really gained anything? To turn from pain is to turn from all out- 

 side impressions. To close the mind to the information given by the 

 senses is to destroy reality, to make activity impossible, to cease to do 

 our duty in the world. This is to cease to grow and to become a bur- 

 den to our friends and a cumberer of society. There is nothing more 



