Christian Science enables us to see that this is Mrs. Eddy's position. She says: “Spirit I called the reality; and matter the unreality”;[1] “Nothing possesses reality or existence except the divine Mind and His ideas”;[2] “Matter and its claims of sin, sickness, and death are contrary to God, and can not emanate from Him”;[3] “The realm of the real is Spirit. The unlikeness of Spirit is matter and the opposite of the real is not divine”;[4] “Matter is Spirit's opposite”;[5] “If matter, so-called, is substance, then Spirit, matter's unlikeness, must be shadow; and shadow cannot produce substance”.[6] Hundreds of quotations of a like kind could be given but these are sufficient to show what Mrs. Eddy's theories as to matter are.
The Neoplatonists have exactly the same theories. Students of Neoplatonism will understand that they taught that any given object has two qualifications, or consists of two elements, substance and shape, or matter and form. Plotinus says: “Everything is composed of matter and form.”[7] The word, form, with him, as is well known, means just what the word, idea, means with Mrs. Eddy.
Recall Plato's “eternal world of ideas” or paradigms as contrasted with the world of things.
- ↑ Retros. and Intros. p. 40.
- ↑ S. and H. p. 331.
- ↑ S. and H. p. 273.
- ↑ S. and H. p. 277.
- ↑ S. and H. p. viii.
- ↑ S. and H. p. 257. cf. Retros. and Intros. p. 39f.
- ↑ 2. 4. 6. Tr. by Fuller.
