The Origin of Christian Science/Chapter 5

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CHAPTER IV.
The Origin of Christian Science
Thomas Polhill Stafford
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
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CHAPTER V.

PSYCHOLOGY.

The psychology of a metaphysical system is its heart. If one thinks consistently, the laws of the mind become the standard for determining the truth and value of every principle.

Now the Neoplatonists are quite consistent. They have given to the world, as has been said, its mightiest religio-metaphysical system. And Mrs. Eddy also, barring a few glaring exceptions that will be pointed out, is reasonably consistent in her psychology. The writer would be willing to stake the truth of his whole contention upon this one chapter alone. Let it be repeated that the parallels traced out are not only of general positions which might have been accidental but of minute thoughts and ideas in detail that are logically related and interdependent. Pointing out identities of this kind between two systems is the best possible proof that one is derived from the other. There is no evidence known that is so conclusive as this, unless it be the direct confession of dependence.

The most general point of similarity between Christian Science and Neoplatonism is the view that there is one and only one infinite mind.

​Mrs. Eddy says: “In Science Mind is one;”[1] “The one Mind only is entitled to honor;”[2] “Infinite Mind cannot be limited to a finite form;”[3] “A limitless Mind cannot proceed from physical limitations. Finiteness cannot present the idea or the vastness of infinity;”[4] “All consciousness is Mind, and Mind is God. Hence there is but one Mind; and that one is the Infinite Good.”[5]

Neoplatonism and Christian Science differ in this, that while the former considers the “one” or the “good” as the first being, and mind (nous) as the second in order, the latter identifies them. Notwithstanding this difference Mrs. Eddy's conception of mind is the same as that of the Neoplatonists.

Plotinus makes a prolonged argument to prove that there is only one infinite intellect or mind, pointing out that if we hold that there are more than one, then there may be an infinite number which he thinks is absurd.[6] He says also: “Because every part of intellect is all things, it is on this account infinite.”[7] Proclus says: “One all-perfect intellect is the cause of all intellects.”[8] By “all intellects” he means, it seems, individual minds. Spinoza, following the Neoplatonists here as in almost all important positions, says ​that God's idea, intellect or mind, is “one” and “infinite,”[9] and that “the human mind is part of the infinite intellect of God.”[10]

The last quotation suggests a point that we must take notice of, namely the relation of individual human minds to this one infinite universal mind; for in working out this problem Mrs. Eddy follows the Neoplatonists. The individual human mind so-called is not really a mind, that is a distinct essence existing as something other than the one infinite mind. It is rather an activity of the one infinite mind. So also when the Neoplatonists speak of “partial intellects” and Spinoza speaks of the human intellect or mind they both mean God's idea or an activity of the divine mind.

Mrs. Eddy says: “All that really exists is the divine mind and its idea;”[11] “We run into error when we divide Soul into souls, multiply Mind into minds.”[12] So Mrs. Eddy does not permit us to speak of our minds or souls. She will allow us to have neither bodies nor souls. God is the one infinite and only soul. We are activities or ideas of that soul. Recall Mrs. Eddy's definition of man: “God's spiritual idea, individual, perfect, eternal.”[13] This it will be understood is the definition of immortal or real man. Mortal man or mortal mind does not exist.[14]

​Plato's “eternal world of ideas” forms a background for this speculation. Windelband, explaining how the Neoplatonists developed the doctrine of their master, says: “Ideas appear no longer as self-subsistent essences (as they did with Plato), but as elements constituting the content of intellectual or spiritual activity; and, while they still remain for human cognition something given and determining, they become original thoughts of God.”[15] Now when we remember that the Neoplatonists are idealists and hold that all reality is in the intelligible world we are prepared to see how Mrs. Eddy does nothing more in this matter than reproduce them.

Plotinus says: “It (intellect) produces in itself an offspring, and at the same time is conscious of containing this progeny in itself;”[16] “One intellect subsists as comprehending all others.”[17] Proclus says: “Ideas are not separated from intellect, subsisting by themselves apart from it.”[18] Spinoza is quite as explicit as Mrs. Eddy. He says: “The idea, which constitutes the actual being of the human mind, is not simple, but compounded of a great number of ideas;”[19] “There is in the mind no absolute faculty of understanding;”[20] The “understanding" is “nothing beyond ​individual * * * ideas.”[21] By “understanding” (intellectus) Spinoza means that part of the mind which is real and eternal, just what Mrs. Eddy means by “immortal Mind.”

The far reaching import in a philosophic system of the theory just given may be easily seen. The human mind is related to the divine mind as an idea of the human mind is considered as being related to the human mind. But as there is no human mind in reality the ideas that we are in the habit of ascribing to it are in fact ideas of the divine mind. So our thoughts and ideas, when we really think and form ideas, are caused by the divine mind and partake of its qualities. Human thinking is divine thinking. The pantheistic character of both systems has hitherto been proved. We have here a parallel between defining lines of the two systems.

To make doubly plain and positive this point let Mrs. Eddy and Proclus speak again. She says: “All that really exists is the divine mind and its idea;”[22] “When we fully understand our relation to the Divine, we can have no other Mind but His;”[23] “Every function of the real man is governed by the divine Mind;”[24] “There is but one I, or Us, but one divine Principle, or Mind, governing all existence.”[25]

Proclus says: “It (intellect or mind) is not ​the cause of things which at one time exist and at another time not, but it is the cause of things which always exist.”[26] Intellectual conceptions or ideas constitute all those things that eternally exist. So then the infinite mind is the cause of all ideas or thoughts. Plotinus had already taught the same doctrine. He says: “Intellect * * * contains all real existences in itself * * * as though they were its own self, and it were one with them.”[27] Real existences are ideas, all ideas, and these are so in the one infinite mind as to be one with it. All ideas, whether considered as belonging to and originating in an individual mind or not, are in reality the progeny and effects of this one infinite mind.

Spinoza stated this Neoplatonic doctrine more plainly and positively than even his masters did and in better terms than does Mrs. Eddy. As in our mind there is no faculty of understanding, since it is nothing more than the sum of the ideas that we designate as ours, our ideas must be caused either by the infinite mind of which they are activities or by outward objects. The latter view is of course impossible with idealists. So Spinoza says: “The actual being of ideas owns God as its cause, only in so far as he is considered as a thinking thing, not in so far as he is unfolded in any other attribute; that is, the ideas both of the attributes of God and of particular things do not ​own as their efficient cause their objects (ideata) or the things perceived, but God himself in so far as he is a thinking thing.”[28]

Stated simply the parallel just drawn is this: the Neoplatonists, Spinoza and Mrs. Eddy all agree in the view that the ideas of the human mind are caused by the divine mind and are really divine ideas. It will be recalled that we proved that Spinoza and Mrs. Eddy deny free agency to man and also affirm his divinity. The logical consistency of Christian Science and Spinozaism as determined by Neoplatonism is beautiful.

This is a good place to explain a difference between the psychology of the Neoplatonists and that of Mrs. Eddy. The Neoplatonists following Plato recognized three distinct kinds of knowledge, while Mrs. Eddy recognizes only two. After sensation, which both reject as not belonging really to the category of knowledge, the Neoplatonists would put in the first class such mental activities or states as imagination, memory, and opinion or belief; in the second class discursive reason; in the third and highest class, intellectual consciousness or intuition. This theory of knowledge has had a mighty influence upon the world. It gave to the “old” psychology its general character and is related to the trichotomous theory of human nature.

The metaphysical basis for this psychology is the theory of the existence of three hypostases or principles, mind, soul and matter. In mind which ​is a superior hypostasis to soul there is the highest or third kind of knowledge and only this. In soul, as such, there is discursive reason or ratiocination and only this. But in a soul which is related to finite body and limited by it, we have the inferior activities that constitute the first kind of knowledge. Now since Mrs. Eddy does not recognize soul as something other than mind but posits only one hypostasis, designated as mind or soul or by some synonym for them, she has only two general classes of knowledge. Discursive reason since it is a mental process in which the element of time enters she must class with the lower kind of knowledge. The knowledge of “immortal Mind” or real knowledge with Mrs. Eddy corresponds exactly to the highest or third kind of knowledge of the Neoplatonists. It is intuitive knowledge or intellectual knowledge. All lower forms of knowledge constitute the class of unreal knowledge. They are activities of mortal mind which does not exist. With Mrs. Eddy there are no grades in knowledge. If one has knowledge he has perfect knowledge. Notwithstanding this great divergence from the Neoplatonists in metaphysics, Mrs. Eddy follows them closely in psychology. Spinoza too had the Neoplatonic theory of knowledge but was a dichotomist. So when we find that they are beholden to the Neoplatonists for their psychology, their slavery to them is the more certainly demonstrated.

But before proceeding further I wish to remark that this want of a metaphysical basis for ​her psychology renders Mrs. Eddy's system hopeless. It is on a foundation of sand. Her system will not stand the psychological test. She denies that the body affects or limits in any way the mind. She of course denies that matter can have sensations[29] or think or form ideas. She maintains that the mind has perfect knowledge only. Whence then are all these imperfect mental states? In what hypostasis or nature do they inhere? “In reality there is no mortal mind,”[30] she says. Then if there is nothing to give birth to false notions, they cannot and do not exist. Nor can the supposition that they exist be possible, for there is no mind that can have this false supposition.[31]

Mrs. Eddy says there is no sickness because matter is unreal; and that the cure to be performed is simply banishing the notion that one is sick, which is a false belief. But now since there is nothing to cause a false belief to be and nothing in which it can be, no false belief exists. So there is no more need to cure false notions than rheumatic joints, for neither exists. Mrs. Eddy's propaganda is a war against what does not exist. By its own confession it is a useless enterprise. If we do not need medicine because there is no body to have disease, we do not need books or teachers to help us get rid of notions that we do not have.

​All psychologists will readily see that in this we have an inconsistency stupendous and destructive, to which the only reply that Christian Scientists can give is the Emersonian sneer that “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.”[32]

It is interesting to notice that Spinoza's psychology had the same defect. He says we know only two of the attributes of God, thought and extension, or mind and matter, and that neither limits or affects the other; and yet he has the three grades or classes of knowledge,[33] the inferior kinds of which are determined by the passivity of the mind; and he often speaks of the mind being passive. To what is it passive? To matter? No. To the divine mind? But its highest knowledge arises thereby. You cannot find an answer to this question in all that he has written. His psychology lacks a metaphysical basis, as does Mrs. Eddy's.

It is not so with the Neoplatonists. They are profounder thinkers than Spinoza and Mrs. Eddy and give a better explanation of human life. Spinoza's treatment of the human mind is mechanical and crude; Mrs. Eddy's is more so. Before she analyzes the rose, she causes its color and odor to fade away and extracts its sap and life. After eliminating all the elements of the human mind that she does not know what to do with, it is rather easy to dispose of the rest. On account of this crushing defect, which the genius of Mrs. Eddy either did not see or could not remedy, it is safe ​to say that her system can never command the intellectual respect of psychologists.

Now let us consider the nature of Mrs. Eddy's “immortal Mind” and analyze its knowledge. We shall find that here the author of Christian Science with scarcely any side-stepping follows the curious tracks of the Neoplatonists. Her conception of “immortal Mind” is the same as their conception of the nous or infinite intellect and her analysis of the knowledge of “immortal Mind” corresponds to their analysis of the knowledge of their infinite intellect.

We need not be troubled to distinguish between the activity of the one infinite mind and that of individual minds inasmuch as individual minds so-called, as we have explained, are rather activities of the one infinite mind. Our knowledge, when it is real knowledge or understanding, is in fact the knowledge of the divine mind. This is a parallel belonging to the pantheistic nature of the systems that need not be traced out again. The student, however, should notice that it is a parallel of fundamental value.

Mrs. Eddy teaches that “immortal Mind” is ever active, never passive. This subject in its relation to the nature of God, since Mrs. Eddy identifies God and mind, was treated in the chapter on Theology. But it is necessary to introduce it here also to show its psychological import. It is the source of the time-honored theory that mind is ever conscious and is in fact this theory. It is as old as Neoplatonism and, it seems, originated in it.

​Mrs. Eddy says: “Immortal Mind is ever active;”[34] “Spirit * * * understands all things * * * and is ever conscious.”[35] She defines intelligence thus: “Substance; self-existent and eternal Mind; that which is never unconscious nor limited,”[36] and says that “intelligence never passes into non-intelligence.”[37]

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;”[38] “The energy of intellect is the same with its essence,”[39] and “intellect * * * exists in energy.”[40] 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,”[41] and holds that “God's intellect is entirely actual, and not at all potential,” and is identical with “God's essence.”[42]

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 ​Neoplatonists as to the knowledge of intellect. Mrs. Eddy says: “How are veritable ideas to be distinguished from illusions? By learning the origin of each. Ideas are emanations from the divine Mind. Thoughts proceeding from the brain or from matter are offshoots of mortal mind.”[43] Referring to Webster she defines idea as “the immediate object of understanding.”[44] This definition is Platonic. Its terms differentiate it sharply from an empirical definition of ideas. Mrs. Eddy, like Spinoza,[45] distinguishes ideas from images. Now Mrs. Eddy considers that ideas constitute all real knowledge. So all true knowledge arises in the mind itself and not by means of anything without.

Plotinus speaking of intellect says: “It likewise does not extend itself to the objects of its perception as if it did not possess them, or as if it acquired them externally, or obtained them by a discursive process, as if they were not already present with it;”[46] “If such an intellect, however, has not an adventitious intellection, whatever it intellectually perceives, it perceives from itself.”[47] Spinoza defines an idea as a “mental conception which is formed by the mind as a thinking thing,” and explains that he uses the word “conception” rather than “perception” because the former expresses better the activity of the mind.[48] Spinoza, like Mrs. Eddy, contends that “body cannot determine mind to think.”[49]

​As has been suggested by certain quotations already given the ideas of “immortal Mind” are to be regarded as eternal. They are not subject to time relations or limitations. The Neoplatonists held the same to be true of the ideas or thoughts of intellect. They all are eternal. Knowledge of time and its relations is inferior and limited knowledge.

Mrs. Eddy says: “Ideas are spiritual, harmonious and eternal;”[50] “The spiritual idea, whose substance is in Mind, is eternal;”[51] “It is the prerogative of the ever-present, divine Mind, and of thought which is in rapport with this Mind to know the past, the present, and the future.”[52] She does not mean that the past, present and future are known as specifications, or demarcations of time, but as constituting one eternity; or that the past, present and future are alike real and present to such mind and thought.

Plotinus says that intellect “intellectually perceives, however, eternally;”[53] Ideas “are generated, indeed, so far as they have a principle of their subsistence; but they are not generated (according to the usual acceptation of the term) because they have not a temporal beginning * * * but they always are, in the same manner as the world which is there”[54] (intelligible world or world ​of ideas). Spinoza says: “Our mind, in so far as it understands, is an eternal mode of thinking.”[55] We can see clearly that Plato's “eternal world of ideas” forms a background for this doctrine as it does for so much that is in Christian Science. Plato made Christian Science possible.

That there are ideas of our mind that do not take cognizance of temporal relations and whose nature is eternal, that is, ideas without a temporal origin, is a very striking theory in itself. Therefore, if we find a woman repeating it 1600 years after it was originated, the conclusion is obvious without being stated.

Mrs. Eddy's “immortal Mind” does not err and does not know error. Its knowledge is perfect and it has a knowledge of perfection only. She says: “Nothing that ‘worketh or maketh a lie’ is to be found in the divine consciousness;”[56] “In the universe of Truth matter is unknown. No supposition of error enters there;”[57] “Incorporeal, unerring, immortal, and eternal Mind;”[58] “Because immortal sense has no error of sense, it has no sense of error;”[59] “Spirit is all-knowing,”[60] and “understands all things.”[61] One acquainted with Christian Science will see readily how radical such a theory is when it is ​consistently worked out, as is the case in Christian Science. Sin, sickness, disease and death are in the same class with error. They all are a result of supposing matter to be real. Mind or God does not know any of these things. To the divine mind all is light and there is no darkness at all, and so it should be to us. God not only does not make mistakes but does not know that any are made.

But this daring denial of such knowledge to the divine mind or infinite intellect is the doctrine of the Neoplatonists. They hold as we have seen that intellect exists in activity and not in capacity and that that which exists in activity is perfect, while that which exists in capacity is imperfect. So if there be such a thing as error it is not in intellect. The Neoplatonists and Mrs. Eddy are strict metaphysical monists and cannot allow the existence of contradictory realities. All reality is in and of mind. Therefore error must be unreal or what to them is the same thing, non-mental. It is not in mind or intellect. To think it even would be like thinking there is darkness in light, which is in fact unthinkable. Since then intellect is ever active and ever conscious and since all ideas are in intellect which is all-perfect,[62] its knowledge also is perfect. Error is privation or the absence of intellect.

Remember Plato's “eternal world of ideas,” or world of paradigms, in which all reality exists and where there is nothing that is unreal and ​where also there are no inharmonious or contradictory principles. Proclus assigns error to that part of the mind which is under the limitation of matter and classes it with evil as does Mrs. Eddy. He says: “What evil is in action, that the false is in knowledge” and that error is “the privation of intellect in opinion.”[63] When this language is understood it will be seen that it has the same meaning as Mrs. Eddy's. Plotinus says: “There is no paradigm of evil there (intelligible world or world of ideas). For evil here (in the world of things and sense) happens from indigence, privation, and defect.”[64] Proclus says the same is true of error. And then he says error is to be referred to opinion. Now opinion is a mental state or activity that is the result of passivity to matter, as we shall see, and so error, according to Proclus, as according to Mrs. Eddy, does not exist in the understanding but is to be referred to matter as its cause, and is that kind of mental state that is explained by passivity to matter.

Spinoza repeats the doctrine of the Neoplatonists in language most explicit. He says: “There is nothing positive in ideas, which causes them to be called false;”[65] “Falsity consists in a privation of knowledge,”[66] and a true idea is related to a false idea as “being to non-being.”[67] He challenges his opponent to “demonstrate that evil, ​error, crime, etc., have any positive existence.”[68] Again he says: “All ideas, in so far as they are referred to God, are true.”[69] He means ideas that originate in and exist in the divine mind. We have seen that Spinoza teaches that God created all that is in his intellect. If then error is naught, it is not in his intellect, that is, he does not recognize it as existing. All God's ideas are true, real and perfect and by virtue of their existence create their objects. Therefore there is not in the divine mind the idea of error, since that would make error real.

The Christian Science trinity has already been discussed. But as it is grounded in Mrs. Eddy's psychology we should here scrutinize it again. Remember that Christian Science is a form of idealism. The mind has its object within itself. The knowing subject and the known object are therefore identical. Now we have seen also that the essence and energy of such a mind are the same. So the act of knowing by which the knowing subject and the known object are united as one is itself the same as either or both of these. The three best Neoplatonic words for these three elements of the trinity are intellect, intelligible and intelligence. While Mrs. Eddy is not so technical as we could wish, in her selection of terms, her psychology corresponds perfectly with that of the Neoplatonists.

Several quotations given in the previous chapter are here repeated. Mrs. Eddy says: ​“Firmament, or understanding, united Principle to its idea. Life and Intelligence, this Principle; idea, the universe and man.”[70] As has been observed, Mrs. Eddy's terms are somewhat confusing but the meaning is clear. There are three elements: the thinking subject, principle, life or intelligence, which of course is mind; the object of thought, idea; and the understanding, or the mental act of thinking, by which the subject and the object are united.

Plotinus says: “Intellect, intelligence, and the intelligible are one and the same thing.”[71] Plotinus uses the term intelligence for the act of thinking. Proclus says: “Since thinking is the medium between that which thinks and the object of thought, and these are the same, thinking likewise will be the same with each.”[72]

Let the student's attention be directed again to the fact that this psychological trinity of the Neoplatonists and Mrs. Eddy is germane to what may be called the cosmological trinity or the theological trinity of Spinoza and Mrs. Eddy of which we have before spoken. We also showed that this theological but non-Biblical trinity had its beginning with the theologian Synesius, who was a Neoplatonic thinker rather than a Biblical exegete. If the subject is not clear to the reader, review the discussion of this topic in the previous chapter. The attempt to explain the sublime but ​mysterious personal trinity of the Bible by means of this pagan speculation, as many unbelieving and a few believing theologians have done, is a specimen of scholastic sophistry, exploited as a precious finding from deep digging in the Scriptures. It is on the contrary a travesty on sane exegesis. As an orthodox Christian my blood is made to boil at such an accommodation of the sacred Scriptures. Its only reason for existence is that it ministers to human pride which the Biblical trinity causes to wither to the roots.

It will be seen that this psychological trinity is also the foundation for the rational mysticism in which Mrs. Eddy reproduces the Neoplatonists.

The writer was surprised to find in Science and Health a parallel to a very curious position as to knowledge found in the Neoplatonists. It is that the highest kind of knowledge or the knowledge of infinite intellect is that which proceeds from cause to effect, not from effect to cause.

Mrs. Eddy says: “We reason imperfectly from effect to cause, when we conclude that matter is the effect of Spirit; but a priori reasoning shows material existence to be enigmatical. Spirit gives the true mental idea * * * Reasoning from cause to effect in the Science of Mind, we begin with Mind, which must be understood through the idea which expresses it and cannot be learned from its opposite, matter. Thus we arrive at Truth, or intelligence, which evolves its own unerring idea and never can be co-ordinate ​with human illusions;”[73] “We may as well improve our time by solving the mysteries of being through an apprehension of divine Principle.”[74]

It will throw light on the language of these quotations to consider that Mrs. Eddy is thinking of the first cause of all as including within itself all effects. She is thinking of cause and effects under the “form of eternity” as Spinoza would express it,[75] not under the form of time. She is thinking of mind as comprehending all things, as a given object necessarily includes its essential qualities. In this sense it is evident that to know the cause is to know with certainty the effect. It is, however, using the words, cause and effect, in a sense not found in logic and common speech, where it is understood that an element of time, though it may be so small as to be imperceptible, intervenes between them. The idea of a cause that requires time to realize itself in its effect, is of course not an idea of “immortal Mind” which thinks only eternally.

This is a doctrine of the Neoplatonists. But first let us hear Spinoza who is so often the medium between them and Mrs. Eddy. He says: “As regards a true idea, we have shown that it is simple or compounded of simple ideas * * * and that its subjective effects in the soul correspond to the actual reality of its object. This conclusion is identical with the saying of the ​ancients that true science proceeds from cause to effect.”[76] In this connection Spinoza understands the “true idea" to be an idea of infinite intellect and that “true science” is true knowledge or the knowledge of this intellect. It seems certain that by “ancients” he means the Neoplatonists, who are described accurately by his language.

Proclus says: “The knowledge of causes is the work of Science (real knowledge), and we are then said to know scientifically when we know the causes of things;”[77] “It is evident that this which knows according to the one, knows so far as the similar is known by the similar, I mean so far as that which proceeds from a cause is known by its cause.”[78] He explains that “to know according to the one” is “one knowledge both of universals and individuals,” “the power of knowing all things,” a knowledge in which there is “no greater knowledge of wholes than of parts.” “Knowing according to the one” means simply understanding all things to be in one principle or cause. This is knowing the effect by the cause when the element of time is eliminated. This kind of knowledge then is the same as Spinoza's “simple idea” which always affirms something of a thing which is “contained in the concept we have formed of that thing.”[79] Spinoza says expressly that “the knowledge of an effect through its cause is the same thing as the knowledge of a particular ​property of a cause.”[80] Now when this simple idea is the idea of God who is the cause of all things, conceived under the “form of eternity,” we have what the “ancients” called “knowledge according to the one” or knowledge of an effect through its cause, and this Spinoza considered to be the highest kind of knowledge, intuitive consciousness,[81] or the knowledge of infinite intellect only. It is much like what Kant calls a priori knowledge.

For Mrs. Eddy to repeat this curious and most subtle speculation of the “ancients” is a very incriminating fact.

At this point the students' attention is called to the primary importance of the above psychological positions. I hope he will see that they are fundamental to much that has been said as to the nature of God, the nature of the world and the nature of man. One's psychology is basic in his system, especially when it is idealism. The logical consistency of both Spinoza and Mrs. Eddy in applying Neoplatonic psychology to Christ has striking significence and peculiarly argumentative force in establishing this thesis. This completes what we have to say on the first phase of the subject of psychology.

We are now to take up certain specific mental activities which Mrs. Eddy classifies as inferior knowledge. Her treatment of them is Neoplatonic. Let us not forget that this kind of knowledge, if in truth according to Mrs. Eddy it ​be knowledge at all, is the knowledge of “mortal mind.” Whether it be real or not Mrs. Eddy recognizes it as being what it may be and so deals with it. In the same manner we will deal with it. The Neoplatonists explain inferior kinds of knowledge as belonging to the soul, which they arranged below mind, as arising on account of the soul's passivity to matter. Notwithstanding this difference between Mrs. Eddy and the Neoplatonists, she follows them in classifying and disposing of these examples of inferior knowledge. This is not strange, since Spinoza, who also did not recognize the hypostasis of soul, followed the Neoplatonists here also.

As “immortal Mind” thinks eternally or as all its ideas are eternal, the idea of time must be in mortal mind. Mrs. Eddy defines time thus: “Mortal measurements; limits, in which are summed up all human acts, thoughts, beliefs, opinions, knowledge; matter; error; that which begins before, and continues after, what is termed death, until the mortal disappears and spiritual perfection appears.”[82] She says: “Time is a mortal thought.”[83] Bear in mind that Mrs. Eddy considers that time is a sphere of limitation in which imperfect mental acts take place and that it ceases before we enter into perfection or eternity. She does not consider that time is any part of eternity as we have before shown. Imperfect ​things or thoughts exist in time, perfect ones exist in eternity.

Let it be fully appreciated that every conception involving the notion of time is according to Mrs. Eddy imperfect and does not belong to “immortal Mind.” This means that a host of mental acts such as imagination, memory, purpose, desire, faith, opinion, hope and reasoning are to be considered inferior states of mind and that too when they are in harmony with the facts of existence. We rise in the scale of being as we are freed from these mental states. They are human knowledge or activities of mortal mind.

This is the psychology of the Neoplatonists. Eternity has to do with the world that is; time with the world that is becoming but is not. The former is one, perfect and infinite, the other is plural, imperfect and finite.

Plotinus speaking of the intelligible world, or world of ideas, says: “Instead of time, however, eternity is there.”[84] The meaning is that intellect or infinite mind has no idea of time. He says again: “The Sciences of intelligibles * * * understand indeed nothing sensible.”[85] Proclus, following Plato closely, says: “Everything generated therefore is apprehended by opinion in conjunction with sense.”[86] In Neoplatonism “generated things” are such as exist in time. Spinoza, following the Neoplatonists, contends that all ​knowledge of things in relation to time comes to us by means of the imagination and not by means of the intellect.[87]

One is much surprised when he first studies Christian Science to discover that Mrs. Eddy minimizes faith. The Bible makes faith a necessary condition of mind for salvation. It is not so in Christian Science in which understanding procures salvation. Mrs. Eddy is consistent in this and is working out her system; for salvation with her means something wholly different from what it means in the Bible, as will be shown later. But here we are concerned with the psychological parallel only.

Mrs. Eddy says: “If Christian Science dishonors human belief, it honors spiritual understanding;”[88] “Belief is less than understanding. Belief involves theories of material hearing, sight, touch, taste, and smell, termed the five senses;”[89] “Spirit is all-knowing; this precludes the need of believing * * * The believer and belief are one and are mortal;”[90] “Error is the basis of all belief. We need instead a true idea, based on the understanding of God;”[91] “Belief constitutes mistakes, understanding never errs.”[92]

Notice in the above quotations these points: beliefs or faith is inferior to understanding; it ​arises from sensation or from a material source; it is a mental state that we should rise above; it is a mental activity in which error resides. Christian Scientists say of one who is sick that he has a “belief.”

This theory as to faith has its origin with Plato who identifies faith and opinion,[93] which as psychological states are of course the same.

Plotinus says: “Sense, and not intellect, will have an apprehension of things external; and if you are willing to grant it, this will also be the case with the dianoetic power and opinion.”[94] The “dianoetic power” is the power of discursive reason or inference. Now notice that he says that both this power and opinion are like sense in that they have to do with external things, that is, these activities of the mind arise from its being affected by external objects.

Proclus follows Plotinus.[95] Spinoza follows Proclus.[96]

Proclus explaining the source of error says it “subsists in the doxastic part” of the soul; that is, in the opinion-forming part.[97] And Spinoza explains error as arising in the same mental act. He explains distinctly that error arises from the imagination but that imagination as such does not ​contain error; accordingly error is simply false opinion.[98]

In explaining Mrs. Eddy's conception of God we showed that she eliminated will from his nature. Here we need a word more as to the psychology of will. Will as designating purpose is a mental state that recognizes the element of time and as such it is an imperfect state and belongs to mortal mind.

Mrs. Eddy says: “Human will belongs to the so-called material senses, and its use is to be condemned;”[99] “Will-power is capable of all evil.”[100]

I do not find this doctrine taught so distinctly in Neoplatonism though it is involved in it, but it is set forth emphatically by Spinoza. Will as an act of preference or decision he recognizes as something worthy, but this he identifies with the understanding and so treats of it. He says: “There is in the mind no volition or affirmation and negation, save that which an idea, isasmuch as it is an idea, involves.”[101] Will, as purpose or wish, is an inferior mental state, the result of temporal limitations of the mind, and has no place in the understanding.[102]

The reader may examine with profit certain proof-texts given in the chapter on Theology.

​Very interesting indeed is Mrs. Eddy's exact reproduction of the Neoplatonic treatment of the act of reasoning or inference-forming power of the mind. This is the power of learning one truth from another, which is not contained in that other truth. It arises from external objects; it is mediate, transitive knowledge involving the element of time; and though it may lead us to the truth it is inferior to the highest knowledge, understanding or intuitive consciousness, the knowledge of which is immediate and intransitive. It is somethinkg like what Kant calls a posteriori knowledge. One is surprised to find Mrs. Eddy repeating this curious psychology of the Neoplatonists, though as has been said there is no ground for it in her metaphysics.

She says: “Evidence drawn from the five physical senses relates solely to human reason; and because of opacity to the true light, human reason dimly reflects and feebly transmits Jesus' works and words. Truth is a revelation.”[103] Notice in this quotation that she says that human reason has to do with evidence drawn from the five senses; that it does give us a knowledge of the teaching of Jesus though it does it by means of an imperfect process and that it is inferior to that power by which truth comes to the mind by revelation. By revelation she means intuition as we shall see.

Again Mrs. Eddy says: "Reason is the most active human faculty. Let that inform the ​sentiments and awaken the man's dormant sense of moral obligation, and by degrees he will learn the nothingness of the pleasures of human sense and the grandeur and bliss of a spiritual sense, which silences the material or corporeal. Then he not only will be saved, but is saved;”[104] “He who is All, understands All. He can have no knowledge or inference but His own consciousness.”[105] As to these quotations notice that she says that reason is the “most active human faculty,” that is, the faculty least under the limitations of material sense and time; that it can lead one to the “spiritual sense” which brings salvation; and that since God does not have such knowledge as “inference" or discursive reasoning it must be an inferior kind of mentality.

I cannot refrain from pointing out again the hopeless inconsistency that we have here in the metaphysics of Christian Science. “Human reason” is inferior knowledge and is therefore not a quality of “immortal Mind.” It belongs then to “mortal mind.” But how can “mortal mind” be spoken of as having a faculty that is “most active” or that awakens “man's dormant sense of moral obligation” or that teaches him by degrees “the grandeur and bliss of a spiritual sense?” How can unreality lead to reality? How can darkness bring us to light?

The same inconsistency exists in her doctrine of faith. After saying that error is the ​source of belief and that belief arises from the material senses, Mrs. Eddy still thinks there is some good in it.[106]

While the subject of Mrs. Eddy's psychological inconsistencies is before us we notice briefly a very notable one. Mrs. Eddy holds that the evidence of the senses is the very opposite of the truth, and yet she relies on the evidential value that comes from the healing of physical diseases. Mrs. Eddy says: “Science reverses the false testimony of the physical senses, and by this reversal mortals arrive at the fundamental facts of being;”[107] “This great fact is not, however, seen to be supported by sensible evidence, until its divine Principle is demonstrated by healing the sick and thus proved absolute;”[108] “After a lengthy examination of my discovery and its demonstration in healing the sick, this fact became evident to me,—that Mind governs the body, not partially but wholly. I submitted my metaphysical system of treating disease to the broadest practical tests.”[109] The “demonstration” and the “tests” are valuable only as they reach the judgment through the senses. She speaks of a thing being “proved to the physical senses.”[110] I am not able to decide whether Mrs. Eddy did not see this inconsistency or whether she concluded that her disciples would ​not see it. What is the use to prove anything to the “physical senses” when their testimony is “false testimony” and must be reversed?

However we are not concerned primarily with the absurdities of the positions of Christian Science but with the fact that it reproduces the principles of Neoplatonism. When Mrs. Eddy follows the Neoplatonists in psychology without their metaphysics, her slavery to them becomes the more palpable.

Plotinus says: “Sense, and not intellect, will have an apprehension of things external; and if you are willing to grant it, this will also be the case with the dianoetic power and opinion.”[111] The “dianoetic power” means reasoning faculty. Proclus says: “Of the whole rational soul, one part is intellect, another is dianoia (discursive reason), and a third is opinion;”[112] “Dianoia is the knowledge of things which subsist between intelligibles and the objects of opinion.”[113]

Spinoza, as usual, follows Plotinus and Proclus. Consider carefully his analysis of knowledge found in his Ethics[114] and these statements: “The nature and efficacy of the natural reason consists in deducing and proving the unknown from the known;”[115] which he holds to be “perception arising when the essence of one thing is ​inferred from another thing, but not adequately; this comes when from some effect we gather its cause, or when it is inferred from some general proposition that some property is always present.”[116] It arises from “notions common to all men" which “form the bases of our ratiocination.”[117]

Spinoza does not mean by the expression “not adequately,” that there is error in the activity or process of reason but rather that it gives us the truth dimly as Mrs. Eddy expresses it. Notice that he says it proceeds from effect to cause and is thus in contrast with the intuitive process of the understanding which proceeds from cause to effect as we have seen that Mrs. Eddy, the Neoplatonists and Spinoza teach.

When I began to study Spinoza I was surprised to find that he identifies love with the understanding. I supposed that he did so because he wanted to embody in his philosophy at least the semblance of this Christian virtue; that his psychology would not permit him to regard love both as an affection and as a noble and ennobling virtue, and since it would militate against him to reject it boldly he chose to retain only the name.[118] I was more surprised, however, to find that the Neoplatonists whom he was reproducing had made the same disposition of love. What purpose they could have had in doing so, since they ​were openly hostile to Christianity I am unable to imagine, unless it was that this virtue was so generally and profoundly appreciated in their day that they too must in some fashion exalt it. And still another surprise was awaiting me — the discovery that Christian Science also identifies love with understanding. We have here another example of what we consider something different from pure thought pressed down into the Christian Science funnel and made to come out the little end as only that.

Mrs. Eddy says: “Infinite Mind cannot be limited to finite form, or Mind would lose its infinite character as inexhaustible Love;”[119] “What is infinite Mind or divine Love?”[120] She calls Mind and Love synonyms.[121] Sentences that give this conception of love abound in Mrs. Eddy's writings. It is unnecessary to say that mind does nothing but understand or exercise consciousness. She does not consider love as affection or desire or any mental state that is produced by external objects or implies the existence of time. Love is intellectual knowing and only this. So she says: “To love one's neighbor as one's self, is a divine idea.”[122]

Plotinus says: “Intellect, therefore, possesses a twofold power; one, by which it perceives intellectually, and beholds the forms which it ​contains; but the other, by which it sees things beyond itself by a certain intuition and reception (of the objects of its vision). * * * And the former, indeed, is the vision of intellect replete with wisdom; but the latter of intellect inflamed with love;”[123] Notice that it is intellect that has the quality of love that is the power by which it soars as upon wings into ecstatic union with the good, the highest blessedness according to the Neoplatonists and Mrs. Eddy as we shall see. He works the subject out carefully and at length, comparing and contrasting this intellectual love of the beautiful and the good with the earthly love or passion of lovers.[124]

Spinoza speaks often of “intellectual love,”[125] which, he says, is “a love towards a thing immutable and eternal,”[126] “springs from the third kind of knowledge”[127] or understanding and “must be referred to the mind in so far as the latter is active,”[128] or in so far as the mind is non-passive; that is, it is a love that must be considered not as affection but as intellectuality.

We now turn our attention to certain applications of the psychological principles that we have discovered in Christian Science and Neoplatonism. Their value in the argument we are making lies in the fact that they are logical applications and ​are worked out in detail by Mrs. Eddy as by the Neoplatonists. Again let me remind the student that I am not selecting at random certain similarities between the two systems that could be accidental, but I am showing that the materials of one building even to the finishing pieces have been used in constructing the other. The bricks, boards, shape, size, and trimmings of Mrs. Eddy's psychological edifice are not only like those of the Neoplatonic temple but are these actual materials and qualities. There are really not two structures but one. An attempt has been made to render the old one modern by simply effacing from the walls the names of heathen gods and writing in their stead the names of Christian ideas.

The first application that may be taken up has reference to language. Mrs. Eddy finds fault with verbal expression as being a hindrance to thought rather than a help. The reason is that words, written and spoken, are dependent on the physical senses, which give error rather than truth. Mrs. Eddy is quite consistent in her depreciation of language. Her rejection of audible prayer is a perfectly logical conclusion. If to understand truth we must get away from all that is physical then a written or spoken utterance is a hindrance. But one wonders why the author of Christian Science did not apply this principle to all use of language and refrain altogether from speaking and writing. Why does she attempt to state truth by means of error?[129]

​Mrs. Eddy says: “The chief difficulty in conveying the teachings of divine Science accurately to human thought lies in this, that like all other languages, English is inadequate to the expression of spiritual conceptions and propositions, because one is obliged to use material terms in dealing with spiritual ideas;”[130] “If we array thought in mortal vestures, it must lose its immortal nature;”[131] “In its literary expression, my system of Christian Metaphysics is hampered by material terms, which must be used to indicate thoughts that are to be understood metaphysically;”[132] “All prayer that is desire is intercessory; but kindling desire loses of its purest spirituality if the lips try to express it.”[133]

Spinoza says: “All that we clearly and distinctly understand is dictated to us, as I have just pointed out, by the idea and nature of God; not indeed through words, but in a way far more excellent and agreeing perfectly with the nature of the mind.”[134]

Plotinus had the same objection to uttered prayer that Mrs. Eddy had. He says: “Invoking God himself, not with external speech, but with the soul itself, extending ourselves in prayer to him, since we shall then be able to pray to him properly, when we approach by ourselves ​alone to the alone.”[135] When Christian Scientists, then, fail to give thanks orally at the table, they are not following Christ, who set us an example for so doing, but Plotinus, the heathen.

Porphyry long ago explained the principle of the position, that words are a hindrance to the highest thinking, thus: “All are familiar with bodies, but the knowledge of incorporeal essences is attained with great difficulty, because our notions about their nature are indefinite, and we are not able to behold them by and through intuition as long as we are under the dominion of the imagination.”[136] It hardly needs to be said that we are “under the dominion of the imagination” when we are subject to or dependent on words.

One may be surprised, if not confused, to find that Mrs. Eddy identifies revelation with intellectual discovery. This conclusion, akin to the one just discussed, follows also from her psychology. Divine revelations by means of the eye or ear are inferior or impossible. They originate on the contrary in the mind itself. Whenever one sees a truth, such as the geometrical principle that the three angles of triangle are equal to two right angles, he has a revelation. Of course this is another example of the trick of using a word bereft of its proper meaning.

Mrs. Eddy says: “Truth is a revelation;”[137] “Science * * * has a spiritual, and not a ​material origin. It is a divine utterance;”[138] “All Science is a revelation;”[139] “To one ‘born of the flesh’ however Divine Science must be a discovery;”[140] “The revelation of truth in the understanding came to me gradually and apparently through divine power.”[141] Mrs. Eddy considers that one who understands Christian Science or any truth has received a revelation but not by means of a physical medium; and also that her understanding of Christian Science was a kind of discovery.

Though this psychology is Neoplatonic we could hardly expect such definite statements as these by the Neoplatonists relative to the subject of prophetic revelation. But we do find them in Spinoza's writings. After arguing that “God can communicate immediately with man,” that is, “without the intervention of bodily means,” and that the receiving of such a revelation requires a superior quality of mind, he says: “No one except Christ received the revelations of God without the aid of imagination, whether in words or vision.”[142]

I do not find this application of the psychological principle that we are discussing in the original Neoplatonists, but it is found in the writings of one of their followers, Averroes, an Arabian philosopher and theologian of the twelfth ​century.[143] I repeat it is an application of Neoplatonic psychology to the subject of prophetic revelation. But Synesius, as we shall see, held essentially to the same position.

The doctrine that we have been considering is properly called mysticism, that is, rational mysticism. It originated with Philo and received definite character at the hands of the Neoplatonists.[144] It has been repeated often and notably by Spinoza and Mrs. Eddy. If any one doubts that Spinoza and Mrs. Eddy are mystics he either does not know what mysticism is or he does not understand them. What is mysticism? Who is a mystic? One who holds that God and divine truth can be discerned immediately by the mind and that they are in this way best understood and who depreciates all physical or material means of obtaining divine knowledge, as either unnecessary or a hindrance, is a mystic.

In Mrs. Eddy's doctrine of predictive prophecy, we find another application of Neoplatonic psychology. Since mind knows all, the future must be as clearly discerned by it as the present. Therefore if we are controlled wholly by mind we may forecast the future perfectly. If on the contrary our prognostication is based on external indications or physical signs it is apt to be false.

Mrs. Eddy says: “There is mortal mind-reading and immortal Mind-reading. The latter ​is a revelation of divine purpose through spiritual understanding, by which man gains the divine Principle and explanation of all things. Mortal mind-reading and immortal Mind-reading are distinctly opposite standpoints, from which cause and effect are interpreted. The act of reading mortal mind investigates and touches only human beliefs. Science is immortal and co-ordinate neither with the premises nor with the conclusions of mortal beliefs.

The ancient prophets gained their foresight from a spiritual, incorporeal standpoint, not by foreshadowing evil and mistaking fact for fiction, — predicting the future from a groundwork of corporeality and human belief. When sufficiently advanced in Science to be in harmony with the truth of being, men become seers and prophets involuntarily, controlled not by demons, spirits, or demigods, but by the one Spirit. It is the prerogative of the ever-present, divine Mind, and of thought which is in rapport with this Mind, to know the past, the present, and the future.”[145]

This lengthy quotation gives the position so well that others need not be recounted. Notice that Mrs. Eddy explains in the same way mind-reading and the prediction of future events. This is logically consistent since to her all events are mental.

Spinoza, attempting to explain to a father how he might have discerned the future of his ​child, says: “No effects of imagination springing from physical causes can ever be omens of future events; inasmuch as their causes do not involve any future events. But the effects of the imagination, or images originating in the mental disposition, may be omens of some future event; inasmuch as the mind may have a confused presentiment of the future. It may, therefore, imagine a future event as forcibly and vividly as though it were present; for instance a father (to take an example resembling your own) loves his child so much that he and the beloved child are, as it were, one and the same. And since (like that which I demonstrated on another occasion) there must necessarily exist in thought the idea of the essence of the child's states and their results, and since the father, through his union with his child, is a part of the said child, the soul of the father must necessarily participate in the ideal essence of the child and his states and in their results.”[146]

Notice in this language that Spinoza holds that future events are discerned not by means of present external events affecting the mind but by the internal nature of the mind itself; and that such events, since they are mental states are discerned by one mind on account of its union with or relation to another mind with reference to which these events or states are to happen. All this follows from the theory that there is one universal mind, activities of which all particular minds or ​mental states are. To him as to Mrs. Eddy the power to know the future is a kind of mind-reading.

This is Neoplatonic speculation.

Synesius, in his curious and interesting work on Dreams, gives a like explanation of divination or discernment of the future. He distinguishes between “external divination” and “philosophic,”[147] the latter and best kind being possible to all persons, since all have the power of intuitive knowledge. He says: “Our oracle dwells with us;” “Each of us is in himself the proper instrument” for divination;[148] “So wise a thing is a soul at leisure from the turmoil of business cares (market senses) which bring to it something that is altogether foreign. The ideas which it has and those which it receives from intellect, it, becoming alone, furnishes to those who are turned to the things within and makes a road for the things from the divine. For to it, being in this state, there arises also the God of the universe as its companion on account of its nature being from the same source.”[149] Synesius, like Spinoza and Mrs. Eddy, depreciates a divination based on images which are excited in the mind or impressed upon it from without, calling them “flowing images”[150] and “confused images.”[151]

​It may be said that if occultism or magic is found in Christian Science it must be connected with this theory of the oneness of all minds. But, whether or not Mrs. Eddy and her followers ever practiced this black art, it does not belong properly to Christian Science. I am willing to free real Christian Science from this stigma.

This doctrine that one can by virtue of the unity of his mind with God foretell the future is found in Philo,[152] concerning whom it should be noted that his philosophic principles were determined by Plato and that he had great influence on the Alexandrian school of thought in general and in particular on Jewish philosophy and the Kabbala, the influence of which on Spinoza has often been observed especially by Is. Misses.[153]

In dismissing this point it should be observed that we have here another inconsistency in the psychology of Mrs. Eddy and in this case of the Neoplatonists also. To the intellect or understanding, the knowledge of which is eternal and which has no sense of time, there is attributed a discernment of the future. This is worse than sophistry. It is dialectical hypocrisy.

In concluding this discussion of psychology we trace a parallel of interest and force in the matter of mathematical demonstration. Since Christian Science and Neoplatonism emphasize ​the importance of a knowledge that is non-temporal and not based on the senses but is simply consciousness, or self-evident knowledge that consists of ideas whose being involves their being true, it is natural and logical that both should make much of the mathematical method of proof or of what may be better termed “mathematical knowing.” For we cannot say that self-evident ideas are proved at all. What is meant by mathematical demonstration is that mathematics, arithmetic and geometry, constitute a discipline that leads the mind from the sensible or material to the intellectual or spiritual. It is a method rather of illumination.

We can simplify the subject by observing that the theory we are now dealing with, had its origin with Plato. He says: “Geometry, no doubt, is a knowledge of what eternally exists.”[154] We recall his famous requirement made of students who would enter his lecture hall: No one should enter here who is not versed in geometry.[155] The reason such a condition was made by Plato should be obvious to all students of his philosophy. The reason is that geometry is a means of discipline to the mind, teaching it how to pass from objects of sense to objects of thought.

Prof. Paul Shorey makes good his contention against Zeller's interpretation of Plato, namely, that “the mathematical principle * * * stands midway between material objects and the ideas.” ​As a discipline or means of developing the mind, mathematical science may be intermediary, a method to teach the mind to pass from the sphere of sense to the sphere of ideas; but “mathematical numbers” are “ideal numbers,” that is, ideas. They are to be distinguished, of course, from “concrete numbered things.” We have in Plato “numbered things” and “ideal numbers,” but no third something between them.[156]

The Neoplatonists following Plato in his psychology follow him also in his method of mathematical demonstration. Plotinus says: “He (who would learn philosophy) must be instructed in the mathematical disciplines, in order that he may be accustomed to the perception of and belief in an incorporeal essence;”[157] “Geometry, which is conversant with intelligibles, must be arranged in the intelligible world.”[158]

The noted English deist and infidel, Thomas Taylor, an ardent student and great admirer of the Neoplatonists, understanding the use made by them of geometry, said a century ago: “We are surprised to find a use in geometry which at present it is by no means suspected to afford. For who would conceive that it is the genuine passage to true theology and the vestibule to divinity?”[159] We would not deny that it is a means of learning ​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.”[160] 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.”[161] He appreciates the value of “mathematical proof” and “knowing mathematically,”[162] as Proclus does of “understanding mathematically,”[163] and says in his Ethics that his purpose is to “treat of human vice and folly geometrically.”[164] 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.”[165] ​Arguing the certainty of Christian Science principles she says: “Science relates to Mind, not matter. It rests on fixed Principle * * * The addition of two sums in mathematics must always bring the same result. So it is with logic. * * * So in Christian Science.”[166] She appreciates very highly “spiritual mathematics.”[167]

I do not refrain from making the comment that it may sound very fine for one to say he knows his religion mathematically but that it is trifling little religion that he so knows.

The writings of the Neoplatonists and Mrs. Eddy abound in examples of mathematical demonstration and illustration too numerous to mention.[168]

Again the writer would beg leave to remind the reader that he places no emphasis on the mere fact that Mrs. Eddy uses mathematical illustrations as the Neoplatonists do; but he would stress the point as having immense value that she makes use of such illustrations, as they do, because of the agreement of her psychology with theirs and because the logical relation and force of such demonstration are the same in her system as in theirs.

​The parallel we have drawn between Mrs. Eddy's psychology and that of the Neoplatonists is a deadly one. The identities here alone are so damaging to Mrs. Eddy's claim to originality as to destroy it utterly. Her case is absolutely hopeless. She and her followers are in a pitiable plight. They have entangled themselves in meshes out of which it is impossible for one to extricate them. They can “save their face” only by keeping themselves ignorant of the psychological shamming involved in their system or by a bracing and brazen affront. Many do it the first way, but a few, we are persuaded, do it the other way. Mrs. Eddy's advice to her disciples not to read anything opposed to her writings is a wise defensive policy.[169] But it is the method of all slave-holders.

  1. ↑ S. and H. p. 114.
  2. ↑ S. and H. p. 183. cf. p. 204.
  3. ↑ S. and H. p. 257.
  4. ↑ S. and H. p. 256. cf. pp. 253 and 469.
  5. ↑ Retros. and Intros. p. 78.
  6. ↑ Cf. 2. 9. 1.
  7. ↑ 3. 8. 8.
  8. ↑ Prov. 10 (p. 69.)
  9. ↑ Cf. Eth. 2. 4.
  10. ↑ Eth. 2. 11. Corollary, cf. Letter, 15.
  11. ↑ S. and H. p. 151. cf. pp. 331 and 71.
  12. ↑ S. and H. p. 249f. cf. pp. 114 and 466.
  13. ↑ S. and H. p. 115.
  14. ↑ Cf. S. and H. p. 103. cf. p. 591.
  15. ↑ Hist. of Phil. 2. 2. 19. 4.
  16. ↑ 6. 7. 35.
  17. ↑ 4. 8. 3.
  18. ↑ On Tim. Bk. 2. (Vol. I, p. 331.) cf. Bk. 5. (Vol. II. p. 340.) and Bk. 2. (Vol. I. p. 215.) cf. also Synesius, Dreams, 5.
  19. ↑ Eth. 2. 15.
  20. ↑ Eth. 2. 48. Note.
  21. ↑ Eth. 2. 49. Corollary. Proof.
  22. ↑ S. and H. p. 151.
  23. ↑ S. and H. p. 205f.
  24. ↑ S. and H. p. 151.
  25. ↑ S. and H. p. 588.
  26. ↑ Theo. Ele. 172.
  27. ↑ 5. 9. 6. Tr. by Fuller.
  28. ↑ Eth. 2. 5.
  29. ↑ Cf. S. and H. pp. 467 and 81.
  30. ↑ S. and H. p. 103. cf. p. 114. cf. p. 151.
  31. ↑ Cf. S. and H. p. 487.
  32. ↑ In his essay, Self-reliance.
  33. ↑ Cf. Eth. 2. 40. Note 2. cf. 3. 2.
  34. ↑ S. and H. p. 387.
  35. ↑ S. and H. p. 250.
  36. ↑ S. and H. p. 588. cf. No and Yes. p. 25.
  37. ↑ S. and H. p. 336.
  38. ↑ 5. 9. 5.
  39. ↑ 1. 4. 10.
  40. ↑ 5. 9. 7. cf. 2. 9. 1.
  41. ↑ Eth. 1. 31. Note.
  42. ↑ Eth. 1. 33. Note 2.
  43. ↑ S. and H. p. 88.
  44. ↑ S. and H. p. 115.
  45. ↑ Cf. Eth. 2. 49. Corollary. Note.
  46. ↑ 5. 9. 7.
  47. ↑ 5. 9. 5.
  48. ↑ Eth. 2. Def. 3.
  49. ↑ Eth. 3. 2.
  50. ↑ S. and H. p. 88.
  51. ↑ S. and H. p. 267.
  52. ↑ S. and H. p. 84.
  53. ↑ 6. 7. 35. cf. 5. 1. 4.; 5. 9. 5.; 5. 9. 6. and 5. 9. 7.
  54. ↑ 2. 4. 5. cf. Proclus, Theo. Ele. 169. and On Tim. Bk. 5. (Vol. II. p. 340.)
  55. ↑ Eth. 5. 40. Note.
  56. ↑ No and Yes. p. 24. cf. S. and H. p. 70.
  57. ↑ S. and H. p. 503.
  58. ↑ S. and H. p. 588.
  59. ↑ S. and H. p. 210. cf. No and Yes. pp. 39 and 45.
  60. ↑ S. and H. p. 487.
  61. ↑ S. and H. p. 250.
  62. ↑ Cf. Proclus in Prov. 10. (p. 69.)
  63. ↑ On Tim. Bk. 5. (Vol. II. p. 447.)
  64. ↑ 5. 9. 10.
  65. ↑ Eth. 2. 33.
  66. ↑ Eth. 2. 35.
  67. ↑ Eth. 2. 43. Note. cf. 2. 49. Note.
  68. ↑ Letter 36. cf. Letter, 32.
  69. ↑ Eth. 2. 32. cf. 3. 1. Proof.
  70. ↑ S. and H. First Edition, p. 230.
  71. ↑ 6. 7. 41. cf. 5. 1. 4. cf. Porphyry, Aux. 44.
  72. ↑ Theo. Ele. 169.
  73. ↑ S. and H. p. 467f.
  74. ↑ S. and H. p. 90.
  75. ↑ Cf. Eth. 2. 44. Corollary, 2.
  76. ↑ Imp. of the Und. p. 32. cf. Eth. 2. 4.
  77. ↑ Theo. Ele. 11. The parenthetical words are the writer's.
  78. ↑ Prov. 1. (p. 6.) cf. 10. (p. 72.) cf. Plotinus 5. 3. 7.
  79. ↑ Imp. of the Und. p. 27, cf. p. 32.
  80. ↑ Theo.-Pol. Treat. Chap. 4. (p. 59.)
  81. ↑ Cf. Eth. 2. 40. Note 2.
  82. ↑ S. and H. p. 595.
  83. ↑ S. and H. p. 598.
  84. ↑ 5. 9. 10.
  85. ↑ 5. 9. 7.
  86. ↑ On Tim. Bk. 2. (Vol. I. p. 211.)
  87. ↑ Cf. Eth. 2. 44; Letter, 29. Eth. 5. 29.
  88. ↑ S. and H. p. 183.
  89. ↑ S. and H. p. 526.
  90. ↑ S. and H. p. 487. cf. p. 569.
  91. ↑ S. and H. First Edition, p. 20.
  92. ↑ S. and H. First Edition, p. 21.
  93. ↑ Cf. Republic. Bk. 6. Sections 509-511. cf. Prof. Paul Shorey's discussion of Plato's psychological terminology, in Unity of Plato's Thought, p. 47f.
  94. ↑ 5. 3. 1. cf. 5. 9. 7.; 3. 6. 4.; 6. 9. 3.
  95. ↑ Cf. On Tim. Bk. 2. (Vol. I. p. 188.); Prov. 1. (p. 3.); On Tim. Bk. 2. (Vol. I. p. 209.); Theo. Ele. 123.
  96. ↑ Cf. Eth. 2. 40. Note 2. and Imp. of the Und. p. 8. ff.
  97. ↑ On Tim. Bk. 5. (Vol. II. p. 446f.)
  98. ↑ Cf. Eth. 2. 40. Note 2. and 2. 41 with Eth. 2. 17. He says that error occurs only in the first kind of knowledge, to which belongs, as he specifies, imagination and opinion.
  99. ↑ S. and H. p. 144.
  100. ↑ S. and H. p. 206.
  101. ↑ Eth. 2. 49.
  102. ↑ Cf. Eth. 1. Appendix.
  103. ↑ S. and H. p. 117.
  104. ↑ S. and H. p. 327f.
  105. ↑ No and Yes. p. 25.
  106. ↑ Cf. S. and H. pp. 208 and 526. cf. Retros. and Intros. p. 75.
  107. ↑ S. and H. p. 120. cf. pp. 122, 252, 284.
  108. ↑ S. and H. p. 109.
  109. ↑ S. and H. p. 111.
  110. ↑ S. and H. p. 46.
  111. ↑ 5. 3. 1. cf. 5. 9. 7.; 3. 6. 4.; 6. 9. 3.
  112. ↑ On Tim. Bk. 2. (Vol. I. p. 188.) cf. Prov. 1. (p. 3.)
  113. ↑ On Tim. Bk. 2. (Vo. I. p. 207.)
  114. ↑ Eth. 2. 40. Note 2, and cf. 2. 41.
  115. ↑ Theo.-Pol. Treat. Chap. 7 (p. 113.)
  116. ↑ Imp. of the Und. p. 8.
  117. ↑ Eth. 2. 40. Note 1.
  118. ↑ Prof. E. E. Powell in his able interpretation of Spinoza has the same fancy. Cf. his Spinoza and Religion, p. 249. But he seems not to be aware of the origin of this theory.
  119. ↑ S. and H. p. 257.
  120. ↑ S. and H. p. 256.
  121. ↑ S. and H. p. 115. cf. p. 583.
  122. ↑ S. and H. p. 88.
  123. ↑ 6. 7. 35.
  124. ↑ Cf. 6. 7. 33-35.
  125. ↑ Eth. 5. 32. Corol.
  126. ↑ Eth. 5. 20. Note.
  127. ↑ Eth. 5. 42. Proof, cf. 5. 33.
  128. ↑ Eth. 5. 42. Proof.
  129. ↑ Cf. S. and H. p. 126.
  130. ↑ S. and H. p. 349.
  131. ↑ S. and H. p. 260.
  132. ↑ No and Yes. p. 19.
  133. ↑ No and Yes. p. 48. cf. S. and H. pp. 4, 7, 8, 12.
  134. ↑ Theo.-Pol. Treat. Chap. 1 (p. 14.)
  135. ↑ 5. 1. 6.
  136. ↑ Aux. 35. cf. 40.
  137. ↑ S. and H. p. 117.
  138. ↑ S. and H. p. 127.
  139. ↑ Retros. and Intros. p. 45.
  140. ↑ Retros. and Intros. p. 42. cf. p. 55.
  141. ↑ S. and H. p. 109.
  142. ↑ Theo.-Pol. Treat. Chap. 1 (p. 19.)
  143. ↑ Cf. Philosophie und Theologie von Averroes, by M. J. Muller, pp. 15, 59, 64, 65, 84, 86.
  144. ↑ Cf. Windelband's Hist. of Phil. 2. 2. 18. 6.
  145. ↑ S. and H. p. 83f.
  146. ↑ Letter, 30.
  147. ↑ Dreams, 15.
  148. ↑ Dreams, 15.
  149. ↑ Dreams, 19. cf. 21.
  150. ↑ Dreams, 20.
  151. ↑ Dreams, 21.
  152. ↑ Cf. Windelband's Hist. of Phil. 2. 2. 18. 6. Note: Windelband here traces Neoplatonic Mysticism also to Philo.
  153. ↑ In Zeitschrift für Exacte Philosophie. Vol. VIII. pp. 359-367.
  154. ↑ Republic. Bk. 6. Section 527.
  155. ↑ Cf. Republic. Bk. 6. Sections 510-511 and 527.
  156. ↑ Unity of Plato's Thought, p. 83.
  157. ↑ 1. 3. 3.
  158. ↑ 5. 9. 11. cf. 2. 9. 16.; Proclus in Prov. p. 38f.
  159. ↑ In Preface to his translation of Proclus' Commentary on Euclid.
  160. ↑ Letter, 74.
  161. ↑ Eth. 1 Appendix.
  162. ↑ Letter, 34.
  163. ↑ On Tim. Bk. 3. (Vol. II. p. 89.)
  164. ↑ Eth. 3 Preface, cf. Theo.-Pol. Treat. 15.
  165. ↑ S. and H. p. 108.
  166. ↑ S. and H. p. 128. cf. No and Yes. p. 20.
  167. ↑ S. and H. p. 3.
  168. ↑ See examples in Plotinus: 5. 1. 11.; 4. 2. 1.; 4. 3. 2.; 1. 1. 4.; 6. 4. 13.; 6. 5. 4-5. See examples in Proclus: Prov. 1. (p. 9); On Tim. Bk. 1. (Vol. I. p. 80), and Bk. 3. (Vol. I. p. 444 ff and also Vol. II. p. 116f). They are very numerous in Theo. Ele. See other examples by Mrs. Eddy: S. and H. pp. 3, 81, 111, 113 and 282.
  169. ↑ Cf. Retros. and Intros. p. 104 and Manual of Mother Church, p. 81.
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