Page:The Origin of Christian Science.djvu/114

106 often in his commentary on Timaeus that the world is “most beautiful” because produced by the “Demiurgus, the best of causes”. Proclus interprets Plato as meaning “intelligible beauty” which is the same as perfection.

In the quotation above from Spinoza in which he denies beauty and confusion to the world, that is, the real world, he is thinking of relative beauty not absolute or intellectual beauty. He could as easily deny perfection as this kind of beauty to the world. He explains his use of these words. He says: “As good and evil are only relative terms, so also is perfection unless we take perfection for the essence of the thing.” If, then, one uses the word perfection to express the essence or reality of the world he speaks correctly. Spinoza also explains his use of the word beauty, thus: “Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or deformed, ordered or confused.” Spinoza is defining strictly his use of the word beautiful. He would apply it to things of time and sense. To him it is a relative term and expresses what Mrs. Eddy calls in her sentence above a “mortal belief.” Consequently Spinoza does not use it to express an eternal essence. If he had chosen to use it for both kinds of beauty as Mrs. Eddy did, he could have used it also for intellectual or absolute beauty as the Neoplatonists did. But he preferred for the sake of