Page:The Origin of Christian Science.djvu/240

232 when man beholds himself God's reflection, even as man sees his reflection in a glass.” The “ceasing of mortality” is of course the coming of life and blessedness and this comes as one beholds himself related to God as the image in the mirror is related to the body or form which it reflects. Hold fast this reasoning and this illustration. Recall that Plotinus uses the same illustration for the relation of creation to the creator. The former is related to the latter as “an image in water, in mirrors, or in shadows” to the object producing it, he thinks.

Describing the greatest and sublimest act of the soul Plotinus says: “Whoever is a spectator of this (divine) world, becomes at one and the same time both the spectator and the spectacle. For he both surveys himself and other things; and becoming essence, intellect and all-perfect animal (or life) he no longer beholds this intelligible world externally, but now being the same with it, he approaches to the good;” “Perhaps, however, neither must it be said that he sees, but that he is the thing seen; if it is necessary to call these two things, i. e., the perceiver and the thing perceived. But both are one.”

Notice simply that in the act of the soul in which one approaches the good and becomes identified with it he is as a spectator beholding so intently the object of his vision and becoming