is never considered as rightfully having any influence upon
the choice of the system to be employed. If Beelzebub can cast out
demons, why not employ him? For, after all, the end to be attained is
the ejection of the demon. And if God had not intended minerals and
plants to be used as both food and medicine, why did He make them?
Besides, man must earn his bread in some way under our present crude
and inhuman social system, and if the demand for drugs exists we may
be very sure it will be supplied by others, if not by ourselves.
Again, the influence of commercialism as a determining factor in the
choice of a profession, is an influence that works to keep many in the
practice of a profession that they know to be both unscientific and
harmful. The result is an inevitable lowering of ideals to the lust of
material accumulation."

"Well!" he exclaimed. "You certainly are hard on us poor doctors! And
we have done so much for you, too, despite your accusations. Think of
the babies that are now saved from diphtheria alone!"

"And think of the children who are the victims of the medical mania!"
she returned. "Think how they are brought up under the tyranny of
fear! Fear of this and of that; fear that if they scratch a finger
blood poisoning will deprive them of life; fear that eating a bit of
this will cause death; or sitting in a breeze will result in wasting
sickness! Isn't it criminal? As for diphtheria antitoxin, it is in the
same class as the white of an egg. It contains no chemicals. It is the
result of human belief, the belief that a horse that has recovered
from diphtheria can never again be poisoned by the microbe of that
disease. The microbe, Doctor, is the externalization in the human
mentality of the mortal beliefs of fear, of life and power in matter,
and of disease and death. The microbe will be subject, therefore, to
the human mind's changing thought regarding it, always."

"Well then," said the doctor, "if people are spiritual, and if they
really are a consciousness, as you say, why do we seem to be carrying
about a body with us all the time--a body from which we are utterly
unable to get away?"

"It is because the mortal mind and body are one, Doctor. The body is
a lower stratum of the human mind. Hence, the so-called mind is
never distinct from its body to the extent of complete separation,
but always has its substratum with it. And, Doctor, the mind can not
hold a single thought without that thought tend