as definite.[1] Mrs. Eddy says: “Accidents are unknown to God, or immortal Mind. * * * Under divine Providence there can be no accidents.”[2]
The student will see that this view is logically necessary for those who hold that the creator made the world or all realities simply by intellection or intuitive thinking and not by choosing one of two or more mental pictures and willing it to be. Thus we see, what we perhaps have already anticipated, how Mrs. Eddy whittles off the attributes of man, as she does the attributes of God, until man, the real or immortal man, is also robbed of personality.
I ask the student to notice that I am not pointing out accidental similarities between Spinoza and Mrs. Eddy. From the mere fact that two thinkers teach the determinism of the will we can infer nothing as to their relation; for traveling independently and on different roads they might by accident meet at this point. From seeing Spinoza and Mrs. Eddy at the same depot, we can infer nothing. But when we see them start from the same place, travel on the same road and get off at the same station and go together in the same winding way around town and finally stop at the same hotel, we have the right to infer that they are intimately related. A detective would hardly want facts more significant than these. And since in this case we cannot say
- ↑ Prov. 2. (p. 22.)
- ↑ S. and H. p. 424.
