such divinity as he and all Neoplatonic pantheists have in mind, a divinity that denies personality and purpose to God.
Spinoza “follows in the train” of the Neoplatonists. He writes to Albert Burgh that he knows he has the true philosophy, which to him is synonymous with theology, “in the same way as you know that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles.”[1] Arguing against the doctrine of “final causes,” he says: “Such a doctrine might well have sufficed to conceal the truth from the human race for all eternity, if mathematics had not furnished another standard of verity.”[2] He appreciates the value of “mathematical proof” and “knowing mathematically,”[3] as Proclus does of “understanding mathematically,”[4] and says in his Ethics that his purpose is to “treat of human vice and folly geometrically.”[5] The original title of the Ethics which contains his metaphysics and theology was Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated.
Mrs. Eddy trails after the Neoplatonists and Spinoza. Explaining how she discovered Christian Science she says: “My conclusions were reached by allowing the evidence of this revelation to multiply with mathematical certainty.”[6]
