Page:The Origin of Christian Science.djvu/182

174 where also there are no inharmonious or contradictory principles. Proclus assigns error to that part of the mind which is under the limitation of matter and classes it with evil as does Mrs. Eddy. He says: “What evil is in action, that the false is in knowledge” and that error is “the privation of intellect in opinion.” When this language is understood it will be seen that it has the same meaning as Mrs. Eddy's. Plotinus says: “There is no paradigm of evil there (intelligible world or world of ideas). For evil here (in the world of things and sense) happens from indigence, privation, and defect.” Proclus says the same is true of error. And then he says error is to be referred to opinion. Now opinion is a mental state or activity that is the result of passivity to matter, as we shall see, and so error, according to Proclus, as according to Mrs. Eddy, does not exist in the understanding but is to be referred to matter as its cause, and is that kind of mental state that is explained by passivity to matter.

Spinoza repeats the doctrine of the Neoplatonists in language most explicit. He says: “There is nothing positive in ideas, which causes them to be called false;” “Falsity consists in a privation of knowledge,” and a true idea is related to a false idea as “being to non-being.” He challenges his opponent to “demonstrate that evil,