Page:The Origin of Christian Science.djvu/104

96 that the view that the world is created by the divine mind, in which there is only understanding or consciousness and to which time is unknown, since the ideas of the divine mind are eternal, necessarily involves the view that the creating act is eternal, that is, timeless. In all this Mrs. Eddy is logical and consistent.

But the point of interest to us is that her masters, the Neoplatonists, teach the same thing with the same logic and consistency. Their language should be carefully considered. Plotinus, explaining how intellect produced the world, says: “If we suppose it to operate by inquiry, its energy could not be spontaneous and truly its own; but its essence would be similar to that of an artificer, who does not derive from himself that which he produces, but provides it as something adventitious by learning and inquiry;” “If, likewise, it is necessary that intellect should be the maker of this universe, it will not intellectually perceive things in that which does not yet exist, in order that it may produce it.” Proclus, indulging in the same speculation, says: “When we say of the Demiurgus himself, that he consults, that he energizes dianoetically (that is, discursively), and that he makes these things prior to those, we relinquish the truth of things;” “It is not lawful for him (the Demiurgus) to look to natures