not formed materially but spiritually, and not subject to decay and dust;”[1] “Man as the offspring of God, as the idea of Spirit, is the immortal evidence that Spirit is harmonious and man eternal;”[2] “Man; God's spiritual idea, individual, perfect, eternal;”[3] “The forever Father must have had children prior to Adam. The great I am made all ‘that was made’. Hence man and the spiritual universe co-exist with God ;”[4] “Man in Science is neither young nor old. He has neither birth nor death.”[5]
From these sentences it is clear that what Mrs. Eddy means by immortal or real man is what is commonly understood as that part or faculty of the mind that thinks, that knows absolutely, that part to which intuitions and consciousness are referred, which is that part of man that the Neoplatonists called nous. This part of man they considered to be perfect and eternal as Mrs. Eddy does. Plato, as is well known, believed in the pre-existence of the soul (pseuche) . The Neoplatonists believed the more in the pre-existence, that is, the eternal existence, of the mind (nous) and its ideas. Of the eternal existence of the mind independent and apart from the body, before it entered the body and after it shall depart from it, Spinoza said many beautiful things.[6]
Mrs. Eddy ascribes to immortal man those qualities which Plotinus ascribes to ideas of the
- ↑ S. and H. p. 200.
- ↑ S. and H. p. 29.
- ↑ S. and H. p. 115.
- ↑ S. and H. p. 267.
- ↑ S. and H. p. 244.
- ↑ Cf. Eth. 5. 23.
