Page:The Origin of Christian Science.djvu/204

196 material origin. It is a divine utterance;” “All Science is a revelation;” “To one ‘born of the flesh’ however Divine Science must be a discovery;” “The revelation of truth in the understanding came to me gradually and apparently through divine power.” Mrs. Eddy considers that one who understands Christian Science or any truth has received a revelation but not by means of a physical medium; and also that her understanding of Christian Science was a kind of discovery.

Though this psychology is Neoplatonic we could hardly expect such definite statements as these by the Neoplatonists relative to the subject of prophetic revelation. But we do find them in Spinoza's writings. After arguing that “God can communicate immediately with man,” that is, “without the intervention of bodily means,” and that the receiving of such a revelation requires a superior quality of mind, he says: “No one except Christ received the revelations of God without the aid of imagination, whether in words or vision.”

I do not find this application of the psychological principle that we are discussing in the original Neoplatonists, but it is found in the writings of one of their followers, Averroes, an Arabian philosopher and theologian of the twelfth