Page:The Origin of Christian Science.djvu/126

118 intellectual world or of God. In this world he says there is eternity, not time; there is neither evil nor privation nor defect. In this world everything is perfect and eternal.

How Mrs. Eddy can thus follow Plotinus is made possible and plain simply by her definition that man is God's idea. God's ideas must be perfect and eternal. We must not forget that the Neoplatonists conceived of Plato's “eternal world of ideas” as God's ideas. They originate and are related as creations or eternal thoughts of the divine mind.

What was said above has now I trust become quite obvious, namely, that anthropology in Christian Science is little more than psychology, and therefore further consideration of this phase of the subject is reserved for the chapter on Psychology.

It will cause us to appreciate more Mrs. Eddy's conception of man in the parallel just drawn to notice that she defines life or explains it away just as the Neoplatonists do. We are in the habit of thinking of life as being something other and more inclusive than mind or thought, but these thorough-going monists must explain all reality in terms of mind. If therefore life is anything it is mind, and nothing more.

Mrs. Eddy says: “Life is God, or Spirit, the supersensible, eternal;” “Life is divine Principle, Mind, Spirit. Life is without beginning and without end. Eternity, not time, expresses the