Page:The Origin of Christian Science.djvu/181

Rh worked out, as is the case in Christian Science. Sin, sickness, disease and death are in the same class with error. They all are a result of supposing matter to be real. Mind or God does not know any of these things. To the divine mind all is light and there is no darkness at all, and so it should be to us. God not only does not make mistakes but does not know that any are made.

But this daring denial of such knowledge to the divine mind or infinite intellect is the doctrine of the Neoplatonists. They hold as we have seen that intellect exists in activity and not in capacity and that that which exists in activity is perfect, while that which exists in capacity is imperfect. So if there be such a thing as error it is not in intellect. The Neoplatonists and Mrs. Eddy are strict metaphysical monists and cannot allow the existence of contradictory realities. All reality is in and of mind. Therefore error must be unreal or what to them is the same thing, non-mental. It is not in mind or intellect. To think it even would be like thinking there is darkness in light, which is in fact unthinkable. Since then intellect is ever active and ever conscious and since all ideas are in intellect which is all-perfect, its knowledge also is perfect. Error is privation or the absence of intellect.

Remember Plato's “eternal world of ideas,” or world of paradigms, in which all reality exists and where there is nothing that is unreal and