But the Christian Scientists who keep their eyes open to the evidences of the mind controlling the body, and know very well how to use these as arguments, shut their eyes completely to the equally convincing proofs of the power of the body over the mind. Hunger or insomnia, if prolonged, will put the mind out of commission. Destroy the optic nerve, and all the mentality in the world cannot make the eyes see. Stop the full flow of blood into the brain, and every one of our mental faculties--memory, perception, judgment, as well as the power of speech--becomes crippled, if not totally destroyed. Will any sensible person dispute these statements? The Christian Scientist, who sees how many things the mind can do, deliberately ignores the things it cannot do. Can mind, as Herbert Spencer asks, change a field sown in wheat into a cotton field? Can it make a horse into a cow? Can it transform an African into an Anglo-Saxon? Can it convert copper or brass into gold? Can we, by thinking, make the sun go around the earth? At one time people did think that the sun moved and that the earth stood still. Did thinking make it so? It would be easier to prove that the mind would be helpless without the body than that the body would be helpless without the mind. Take away from man his erect posture or his hands, and not even the mentality of a Prometheus would prevent the decline and deterioration of the human race. What a wonderful instrument is the hand! It has no doubt contributed much towards the evolution of man. The thumb meeting each finger separately, or all four of them combined, enables one to take hold of things. The ability to feel things with the hands, to turn them over, to take them apart, to bring them nearer to the eyes for a more minute examination, started the mind into action, just as the same hands, by putting food into the mouth, started the machinery of life into going. Deprive man of his hands, and he will slowly slip to the foot of the ladder, no matter how much mind he may have. On the other hand, endow an oyster with the human frame, and in time it will develop a mind and a civilization. An oyster with the mind of a Shakespeare would still be an oyster, while a Shakespeare with the body of an oyster would have no use for his "thousand souls." Why do not the converts of Mrs. Eddy see all sides of a question? Because they think so far and no farther. Do Christian Scientists Use their Minds?