Plotinus in a concise paragraph explains.[1] As Mrs. Eddy and the Neoplatonists explain moral evil and physical evil, or natural defects, in the same way, namely, by denying their existence, and as this chapter is growing too long, I defer further discussion of this matter to the chapter on Ethics.
At this point it is proper to speak of Mrs. Eddy's doctrine of the beauty of the world. To her the beautiful is the same as the perfect, and the eternal. To her beauty is the same as Plato's intellectual beauty. It is the beauty of a circle, not of the one that we see with our eyes, but of the one that is in our mind, which is a perfect circle. It is the beauty of the geometrical truth that the three angles of a triangle make two right angles, which is true not of the triangular figures that we see but of the ideal ones. Mrs. Eddy says: “Beauty, as well as truth, is eternal; but the beauty of material things passes away, fading and fleeting as mortal belief;”[2] “The recipe for beauty is to have less illusion and more soul, to retreat from the belief of pain or pleasure in the body into the unchanging calm and glorious freedom of spiritual harmony.”[3] It is clear from these sentences that to Mrs. Eddy what is really beautiful is eternal, and that it is the harmony which is spiritually or intellectually discerned, that is, it is perfection. Proclus following Plato closely asserts
- ↑ Cf. 5. 9. 10.
- ↑ S. and H. p. 247.
- ↑ S. and H. p. 247f.
