Page:The Origin of Christian Science.djvu/208

200 mental states are. To him as to Mrs. Eddy the power to know the future is a kind of mind-reading.

This is Neoplatonic speculation.

Synesius, in his curious and interesting work on Dreams, gives a like explanation of divination or discernment of the future. He distinguishes between “external divination” and “philosophic,” the latter and best kind being possible to all persons, since all have the power of intuitive knowledge. He says: “Our oracle dwells with us;” “Each of us is in himself the proper instrument” for divination; “So wise a thing is a soul at leisure from the turmoil of business cares (market senses) which bring to it something that is altogether foreign. The ideas which it has and those which it receives from intellect, it, becoming alone, furnishes to those who are turned to the things within and makes a road for the things from the divine. For to it, being in this state, there arises also the God of the universe as its companion on account of its nature being from the same source.” Synesius, like Spinoza and Mrs. Eddy, depreciates a divination based on images which are excited in the mind or impressed upon it from without, calling them “flowing images” and “confused images.”