To Dr. Quimby, "Mind," or "Spirit" was the principle of all things. To him, Matter was a condition of Spirit--"an idea," he said, "reduced to a solid"--a "solid" meaning a definite and real appearance to human sense. But this conception, which the old and regular school of metaphysicians have held for thousands of years, would not do for the genuine original "Mother of Christian Science" when she came to prescribe a dogma for the cure of all possible disease from leprosy to bunions. It was necessary, she thought, to have a stronger pill. She compounded it in the form that "matter," including the "mortal body," is not only "the objective state of the mortal mind," but that mortal mind is unmixed, "error," entailing all sin, disease, and death. Yet "error" is really "nothing"; or say something only to be _denied_. The duty of life, "_in Science_," is to make this denial effective. Matter, sin, disease, are absolute illusions and delusions of "mortal mind," which itself is just "error," to be wiped out. Now say so, and they are all gone. Or if they persist in seeming to be anywhere, be more firm with them. Sing the denial, as well as say it. Keep it up. Let nothing else intervene for a second. Let every paragraph you write be made of it. Give it ten thousand different forms, and each form ten thousand variations. If you fully concentrate your whole mind on this "divine" business, and pay the full price for learning it, you will elevate yourself into "perfect harmony" with "Immortal Mind." When you accomplish this undertaking, impurity and evil, sin, disease and death, will disappear as the shadow of their original nothingness, which they always are and ever were. Here is the whole real substance of "the precious volume," _Science and Health_, including Mrs. Eddy's marvelous _Key to the Scriptures_. Still, the holy tome has some interesting particulars. On opening it, and journeying only as far as page 2, one finds that, while "Christian Science" is copyrighted property, "the Divine Spirit" was the real author of it; for Mrs. Eddy explicitly declares that through "Christian Science" the Divine Spirit testified to her, and that the testimony unfolded her one basic, forever-echoed assumption that "matter" has nothing in it but "falsity." Next comes up the Platonic conception--which, unfortunately for Plato, he neglected to copyright--that the Principle of Mind, with its reflection or "idea," constitutes the real universe. Mrs. Eddy pronounces this philosophical conception a scientific fact; but it was not "proved to the senses"--which, by the way, _never perceive anything but "error"_--until "Christian Science revealed it." Then it was proved "incontrovertibly, absolutely and divinely," by repairing Mrs. Eddy's back after a fall on ice.