Page:The Origin of Christian Science.djvu/183

Rh error, crime, etc., have any positive existence.” Again he says: “All ideas, in so far as they are referred to God, are true.” He means ideas that originate in and exist in the divine mind. We have seen that Spinoza teaches that God created all that is in his intellect. If then error is naught, it is not in his intellect, that is, he does not recognize it as existing. All God's ideas are true, real and perfect and by virtue of their existence create their objects. Therefore there is not in the divine mind the idea of error, since that would make error real.

The Christian Science trinity has already been discussed. But as it is grounded in Mrs. Eddy's psychology we should here scrutinize it again. Remember that Christian Science is a form of idealism. The mind has its object within itself. The knowing subject and the known object are therefore identical. Now we have seen also that the essence and energy of such a mind are the same. So the act of knowing by which the knowing subject and the known object are united as one is itself the same as either or both of these. The three best Neoplatonic words for these three elements of the trinity are intellect, intelligible and intelligence. While Mrs. Eddy is not so technical as we could wish, in her selection of terms, her psychology corresponds perfectly with that of the Neoplatonists.

Several quotations given in the previous chapter are here repeated. Mrs. Eddy says: