Mrs. Eddy says: “Immortal Mind is ever active;”[1] “Spirit * * * understands all things * * * and is ever conscious.”[2] She defines intelligence thus: “Substance; self-existent and eternal Mind; that which is never unconscious nor limited,”[3] and says that “intelligence never passes into non-intelligence.”[4]
Plotinus says: “It is necessary, however, to consider intellect, truly socalled neither as intellect in capacity, nor as proceeding from the privation to the possession of intellect;”[5] “The energy of intellect is the same with its essence,”[6] and “intellect * * * exists in energy.”[7] This is the same as saying that the activity of intellect or mind is as constant as its being, which is another way of saying that mind is ever active. Spinoza will not “admit that there is such a thing as intellect in potentiality,”[8] and holds that “God's intellect is entirely actual, and not at all potential,” and is identical with “God's essence.”[9]
Since Mrs. Eddy identifies mind and God and since, as I have shown in the chapter on Theology, both systems agree as to the doctrine of God being ever in the active state, I need not here trace further this parallel.
The knowledge of “immortal Mind” arises within it; it is not adventitious. So teach the
- ↑ S. and H. p. 387.
- ↑ S. and H. p. 250.
- ↑ S. and H. p. 588. cf. No and Yes. p. 25.
- ↑ S. and H. p. 336.
- ↑ 5. 9. 5.
- ↑ 1. 4. 10.
- ↑ 5. 9. 7. cf. 2. 9. 1.
- ↑ Eth. 1. 31. Note.
- ↑ Eth. 1. 33. Note 2.
