Page:The Origin of Christian Science.djvu/130

122 draw back a little from signing the last statement but Mrs. Eddy would not. They are strict metaphysical monists and cannot allow more than one reality.

We are in the habit of looking upon nature as possessing many realities and many beautiful varieties. Instead of this Christian Science gives us a dead sameness. Life is not life; it is something else. Other things are not other things, they are this same, one thing, mind or principle. Christian Science tells us that we are looking into the big end of a funnel full of many apparently different realities but which are really illusions, and that by means of its minimizing glass we may see all of these illusions sink down and vanish at the little end, where there is room for only the one reality, mind. Everything has to be run through this funnel. What will not go through has no existence. Man is simply idea. He is intellectuality, he is thought and nothing more. He has, or rather he is, understanding, intuition or consciousness but nothing more. Eliminate body and all the so-called mental activities that are derived therefrom and what you have left is man. Man is simply mathematical knowing or mind, in its intellectual operation, without body or sensation or sense of time or memory or imagination or discursive reason or any other of the appurtenances thereof.

We have before shown that Christian Science is pantheistic; that it identifies nature and God. Since man is a part of nature we may then