Page:The Origin of Christian Science.djvu/109

Rh the counsel of reason (that is, discursive reason), but from a more excellent essence, naturally generating an offspring similar to itself.” Proclus has the same thought and attributes it to Plato.

But here again Spinoza's language helps to clinch our contention. He says: “All that is in the power of God (and with Spinoza power of God is synonymous with intellect of God) necessarily is;” “Things could not have been brought into being by God in any manner or in any order different from that which has in fact obtained.” Spinoza too puts his deity under necessity. He, two hundred years ago, argued that for God to know is for him to create, as does Mrs. Eddy. The Neoplatonism of Christian Science betrays the finishing touches of Spinoza. The world's profoundest pantheist and subtlest infidel indulged in the same kind of “revelation,” that the author of Christian Science enjoyed.

Another conclusion that follows from the eternity of the world, as also from other theories of Mrs. Eddy and her masters, is that the world is perfect. Nature considered in its entirety is without defect. Since the world is God's idea or the object of his thinking and since God's thinking is perfect, his idea or his thought is perfect. In other words the world is perfect. Since the noumenon and the phenomena constitute God, and