Page:The Origin of Christian Science.djvu/60

52 will not suffer itself to be numbered with another nor indeed to be numbered at all.” The meaning of Plotinus is that the “one” is not to be thought of as one of a class or series. To call it “one” in this sense, that is, as a man or a horse is one, would be to number it and this would not be proper, he thinks. Here is a striking and exact parallel in thought. Mrs. Eddy was born sixteen hundred years too late to make the revelation to us that she claims to do. Proclus follows Plotinus. He says: “The One is simply the first;” “The One of it (Providence or God) is not like an individual one.” Proclus beat Mrs. Eddy to this idea by 1400 years. These Neoplatonists were followed by Spinoza, who expresses the thought very clearly and in language which Mrs. Eddy^s language resembles, thus: “A thing can not be called one or single, unless there be afterwards another thing conceived, which (as has been said) agrees with it;” “He who calls God one or single has no true idea of God and speaks of him very improperly;” “We do not conceive things under the category of numbers, unless they first have been reduced to a common genus.” Spinoza, the world's greatest pantheist, following the Neoplatonists, beat Mrs. Eddy to this idea by 200 years, and Mrs. Eddy comes along at this late date and says it is a revelation to her. I cannot believe that