The Origin of Christian Science/Chapter 3

by Thomas Polhill Stafford

 

CHAPTER III.

COSMOLOGY.

Cosmology is theory as to the world, and by world is meant the entire universe.

Naturally we begin this discussion with Mrs. Eddy's teaching as to matter. The two doctrines most pronounced in Christian Science are those relative to God and to matter. We have smooth sailing after we get the bearings that her theories on these subjects furnish us with.

It hardly needs to be stated that Mrs. Eddy teaches the unreality of matter. No idea is more baldly thrust at us and more doggedly reiterated. The divine mind and its ideas only are real; all else is unreal. She says: “All that really exists is the divine Mind and its idea.”^[1] Recall what was said as to Mrs. Eddy's doctrine of emanation. All reality is related to the divine mind as light is related to the sun. Matter is to God as darkness is to light. Do not forget this illustration. No other language throws so much light on Neoplatonism and Christian Science. Darkness is the negation or absence of light. Matter accordingly is the absence of or opposite of God or reality. It is simply non-being or in other words it is nothing. The least acquaintance with Christian Science enables us to see that this is Mrs. Eddy's position. She says: “Spirit I called the reality; and matter the unreality”;^[2] “Nothing possesses reality or existence except the divine Mind and His ideas”;^[3] “Matter and its claims of sin, sickness, and death are contrary to God, and can not emanate from Him”;^[4] “The realm of the real is Spirit. The unlikeness of Spirit is matter and the opposite of the real is not divine”;^[5] “Matter is Spirit's opposite”;^[6] “If matter, so-called, is substance, then Spirit, matter's unlikeness, must be shadow; and shadow cannot produce substance”.^[7] 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.”^[8] 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. That world of ideas contributes the forms to the material things of this world of sense. The form or idea they regarded as real and eternal, the matter or substance as temporal and unreal. This is contrary to our common way of thinking of them but is the basis for Mrs. Eddy's way of thinking of them which she confesses is contrary to our common conception. Recall her statement: “From the infinite elements of the one Mind emanate all form, color, and quality and quantity, and these are mental, both primarily and secondarily.”^[9] That is, Mrs. Eddy believes in the reality of material things in so far as their forms are concerned. She is a thorough-going and consistent idealist and cannot allow reality in anything except what is mental. On this point of the unreality of matter the parallel of the two systems is perfect.

That matter is to be considered as the opposite or negation of the good, God, form, the ideal or the real is evident from this quotation from Plotinus: “It is correct then to speak of matter both as having no qualities and as being evil. For it is not called evil because it has qualities but rather because it has not, lest otherwise it were evil from being form and not from being the nature opposite to form.”^[10] Here is a parallel brought to light that will be taken up later, namely, that the two systems identify matter and evil, since both these are opposite to the good. Dismiss this theory for the present and notice the point that matter is here described by Plotinus as “being the nature opposite to form,” that is, opposite to idea, reality, God or good. The Christian Science shoe, in size and shape, fits exactly the Neoplatonic track.

In the following sentence Plotinus conceives of matter as shadow or as darkness. “At this point she (the soul) already has hold of matter, seeing what she does not see, just as we talk about ‘seeing the dark.’ ”^[11]

Mrs. Eddy performs nicely for us. She is stepping accurately and gracefully in the tracks of Plotinus. Her skill, though secretly acquired, evinces the best of training.

It is appropriate to consider in this connection Mrs. Eddy's application of the doctrine of the unreality of matter.

It is hardly necessary to say that Mrs. Eddy reasons that since matter is unreal, the human body is unreal and therefore sickness is unreal. Accordingly it is useless to take medicine. If there is anything new in Christian Science this is it. But notice, it is only an application of the principle and not the principle that can be said to be anything novel. And we have seen that Mrs. Eddy must have known that P. P. Quimby made this application of the principle. The principle is as old as Plato and even older. The most ardent friends of Mrs. Eddy would hardly claim that such an application of this principle is a mark of genius. She is entitled to all the honor that is due her for this and all the dishonor that is due her for refusing to apply the principle in other practical cases that logically demand it.

Mrs. Eddy makes an application of it to the Christian ordinance of the Lord's Supper, which she very naturally rejects.^[12] Since our business is to get away as far as possible from matter or darkness, the opposite of spirit or light, then we should discard all material emblems. This is good logic if we grant her premise.

But Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was a Neoplatonist rather than anything else, rejected the Lord's Supper evidently for the same reason. He was, as is well known, a Unitarian minister of the Gospel for several years, but renounced that vocation when he found that he could not any longer conscientiously administer this ordinance of the church.^[13] His philosophy now had the right of way and his Christianity was side-tracked. It may be said to the credit of this great thinker that his conscience was too sensitive to truth and honor to permit him to propagate his philosophic principles in the livery of Christian terms. It is good and beautiful to be spiritual, but it is not wise, however philosophic it is, to be so spiritual that we are nothing else. It may be a sublime experience to glide in a flying machine in thin air far above the earth, but one does not possess mental poise who is so carried away with the exhilaration of the sensation as to imagine that he will never need to set foot on the ground again. A spirituality that makes indiscriminate and wholesale war upon the body is a spirituality that is pagan and not Christian. The Bible does no such thing as this.

Of course Mrs. Eddy is against the resurrection of the body, as will be seen later. For the soul to re-enter the body is for it to come again into its opposite. It is light clothed with or hidden in darkness. Christ's ascension was a discarding and an abandoning of the “mortal coil.” Matter is a negation or limitation of the spirit. In proportion as one escapes from the body he becomes free. To get away from it entirely is to be where all is light and where there is no darkness at all. It was impossible therefore for Mrs. Eddy to believe in or desire the resurrection of the body. Some of her followers when she died did not seem to understand this and declared that they expected her resurrection. But the reappearance of Mrs. Eddy in the flesh, in finiteness, in unreality, in shadow, in falsity, and darkness would have spoiled all her teaching. In this case certainly “the last error would be worse than the first.”

It was the contrary with Jesus Christ. He taught that death is a reality which he could conquer and demonstrated the truth of his words by his death and resurrection. Mrs. Eddy taught that death is an unreality that could be avoided and demonstrated the falsity of her words by dying and staying dead. Jesus Christ died because he chose to. Mrs. Eddy died because she could not help it. Her disciples said that she was, during the time of her fatal illness, “in error”. It would be a greater error for her to return to materiality and unreality, to darkness and finiteness. No, no! you fond disciples; you should be more philosophic. Since it would be so great a calamity to return to this “mortal coil”, why is it an error to be shuffling it off?

But one wonders why Mrs. Eddy did not continue the application of this principle of the unreality of matter. Why did she not work it out completely and consistently? She makes war on error, sin, sickness, and death because matter is unreal. But she has no right to stop here. She has started on a certain road. She must travel it to the end or go back. She has no right to stop, look wise and say, “See what progress I have made.” No, we say, “Go on, or confess that you are in a bad way.”

If matter is darkness and spirit is light then the less materiality we have the more spirituality we have; the more we reduce the corporeality, the more we increase the mentality; the leaner the body, the fatter the soul.^[14]

This is invincible logic. Who does not know that the less darkness there is the more light there is? If then I am hunting for a pious man there is an infallible rule to guide me; he is anyone whose bones are ready to protrude.

If there is ridicule in this language I remind the reader that it is sound reasoning also. It was just this supposedly deep but impractical metaphysics that produced asceticism in the church. And every student of church history and of dogmatics knows that it was not Christian theology but Platonic philosophy that created this caricature of life which was a mark of the Dark Ages and which still lingers in the institutions of monasteries and convents. It is the necessary result of the notion that mind and body are related as reality and unreality, as light and darkness. But Mrs. Eddy does not make this logical application of her principles. On the contrary she claims that she can transform a “crow bait” into a race horse;^[15] and Christian Scientists are reasonably fat and sleek. They know well how to take care of the physical man, treating it as something very precious. In this they go contrary to their principles but make a very pleasing plea for popular patronage. In this Mrs. Eddy is like Bishop Berkeley, who taught that physical objects do not exist but that we should act just as though they did.^[16] Why bother us then with all these subtleties if we are to go on living the same kind of life that we have been living, except in certain arbitrary reformations instituted by Mrs. Eddy on account of her antipathy to medicine and orthodoxy? But we are not yet through with Mrs. Eddy's inconsistencies.

Matter is unreal and is darkness, she vehemently contends, but she makes financial charges for dispensing the light of her health-giving metaphysics. That is, she demands so much unreality and darkness in exchange for so much reality and light. It is stated that her estate after her death was appraised at over two millions of dollars. She certainly knew how to chase the shadows of darkness and to get possession of them; and how also to will them to her church, believing, it would seem, that the church needed them, Mrs. Eddy was a financial success. She beat all other religious reformers in making money. Jesus of Nazareth was not in her class. He died poor; she died in the arms of luxury, that is, in the enjoyment of the shadow of darkness and unreality. Oh! consistency, thou art indeed a jewel; but alas! how the sow tramples upon thee! How sweet the darkness was to this angel of light!

The great American trio of religious grafters, Joseph Smith, Alexander Dowie and Mary Baker G. Eddy each, had a genius for getting a corner on revelation and getting in the shekels. And the greatest of these is Mary Baker G. Eddy.

Again, since matter is unreal, Mrs. Eddy argues, we should take no medicine. For both the pill and the swallowing machine are unreal. The acting subject and the thing acted upon both, you see, are unreal. Therefore, to do this thing is to give ourselves up to unreality and to forsake reality. That is, it is turning away from the light of day and going into the shades of night. It is not good logic, she thinks, for one unreality to consume another smaller unreality.

Very well, but she should reason the same way about swallowing any other piece of materiality. Mrs. Eddy should have continued the application of her logic and advised us thus: “My little children, bread is unreal and your body is unreal. It is not necessary for one unreality to chew up and swallow down another unreality or for one shadow to consume another shadow. The whole physical performance is a delusion of the flesh and the very thought of it jars us out of harmony with the universe of reality. So from henceforth eat nothing. The spirit should dominate the body, not the body the spirit.” But who ever heard of a Christian Scientist fasting? They have to swallow down as much unreality of this kind as the rest of us do, and seem to enjoy it equally as well. It has never been claimed for the founder of Christian Science, so far as I am aware, that she failed to pay her respects daily to the materiality of food.

Finally, consider the psychology involved in the rejection of the Lord's Supper. It is using the physical to suggest the spiritual. It is using error to teach truth. With flourishing rhetoric and empty profoundness, Mrs. Eddy says: “If we array thought in mortal vestures, it must lose its immortal nature.”^[17] The great question of psychology herein involved will be taken up later. Here it is desired only to give a passing notice to the subject, and to remark that if this kind of reasoning is correct then all teaching by object-lessons is wrong, for it is imparting ideas by means of the visual sense, that is, it is imparting the spiritual by means of the physical, or stating truth by means of error, as Mrs. Eddy argues.^[18]

But do Christian Scientists reject the principle of teaching by object-lessons? Not when it is inconvenient. For example, Mrs. Eddy has permitted her pictures to be scattered everywhere. Plotinus scorned such a thing and was consistent. When one wanted him to sit for his likeness to be taken, he declined, giving for himself and all his followers a satisfactory reason: “As if (said he) it was not sufficient to bear this image (the body) with which nature has surrounded us, you think that a more lasting image (bodily likeness) of this image should be left as a work worthy to be inspected.”^[19] What splendid philosophy! How beautifully consistent! Why Mrs. Eddy did not stand firm with her master on the same spiritual pinnacle but fell off and down into materiality in permitting her image to be reproduced may be explained in two ways. It may have been on account of feminine vanity, a materiality which was not fully overcome by her spirituality. The better explanation is, however, that pictures in our time may become a lucrative commercial commodity. Plotinus, I judge, was not so tempted. What's the harm anyway in swapping one shadow for another, especially when one is willing to give more than he gets of the article? There is nothing, you see, in either parting with or receiving what is unreal. A very convenient philosophy Christian Science is! What consistency in inconsistency!

The digression that we have indulged in is justifiable on the ground that it brings into clear view the radical character of Christian Science principles and Mrs. Eddy's arbitrary and limited application of them. Christian Scientists, as is well known, live changed lives both for the better and for the worse. But the reforms that they practice are not half so radical and revolutionary as the system really demands. It demands with as inexorable logic as can fetter human thought that they eat nothing, see nothing, hear nothing, feel nothing, in short that they be rid of their bodies immediately and with the swiftest possible dispatch. Mrs. Eddy has carried her principles into absurdities from some of which common sense restrained the Neoplatonists. And her common sense, too, permitted her to follow her principles into only a few of the follies into which they lead those who do not know when to slip the halter from their heads. Practical Christian Scientists keep their hands on the buckle and refuse to go where it is unpleasant or dangerous. I take the liberty to suggest that they make much of the time-serving saying of their half-brother, Ralph Waldo Emerson, namely, that “with consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.”^[20]

To make it clear how foreign to Christianity is the relation of soul and body, which we have been reviewing, let the student consider that the conception of the body as the prison-house of the soul is not found in the Bible at all. It is a pagan notion. Preachers who proclaim this vagary ought to “sit up and take notice”. The Bible teaches the redemption and resurrection of the body and our eternal existence in it; not escape from it.

The testing of a principle is the proving or disproving of its truth and value. If the principle of the unreality of matter cannot be applied to one department of practical life as well as another, then it is not true and should be rejected. We may say of Mrs. Eddy, as was humorously said of Bishop Berkeley, that when she says there is no matter, it's no matter what she says. The material world is “real as long as it lasts”, as Bob Burdette wittily puts it.

In an idealistic system, a system that confines reality to the divine mind and its ideas, it is natural and necessary that mind be considered as the creator of the world. And so Mrs. Eddy and the Neoplatonists teach.

Two suppositions which will be discussed at a proper time should for the present be kept in mind: that both Mrs. Eddy and the Neoplatonists teach that there is one infinite mind; and that when they speak of creation they are not thinking of what has a beginning in time and an existence of limited duration but of what is eternal. If the student will lay hold of this thought he will easily understand and appreciate the parallel which, though traced with brevity here, is far reaching in importance.

Mrs. Eddy says: “The mythical human theories of creation, anciently classified as the higher criticism, sprang from cultured scholars in Rome and in Greece, but they afforded no foundation for accurate views of creation by the divine mind.”^[21] We are not concerned with this unintelligible reference to “higher criticism” and need not be confused by it. But consider other quotations from her to the same effect: “Infinite Mind is the creator, and creation is the infinite image or idea emanating from this Mind;”^[22] “Divine Mind is the only cause or Principle of existence;”^[23] “The universe reflects God. There is but one creator and one creation. This creation consists of the unfolding of spiritual ideas and their identities, which are embraced in the infinite Mind and forever reflected;”^[24] “God creates all forms of reality. His thoughts are spiritual realities.”^[25] We find the Neoplatonists affirming the same doctrine with the same positiveness. Plotinus praising the nous, which is infinite mind or intellect, says: “Is it not evident, that being intellect, it intellectually perceives in reality and gives subsistence to beings?”^[26] The thought is that infinite mind by thinking brings beings into existence. Again, Plotinus says: “Intellectual perception is simultaneous with existence.”^[27] The idea is that to think a thing is to create it, which is clearly true for one who holds that thoughts are the only realities. Proclus states the position in plainer language than does Plotinus. He says: “The causes of all things are in intellect;”^[28] “Intellect is the maker of it” (the world);^[29] “His intellections (the thoughts or ideas of Demiurgus, the creator) are creations.”^[30] The Neoplatonists followed Plato in calling the infinite mind or intellect when thought of as the creator, the Demiurgus.^[31]

No comment is necessary. The language of Proclus is as clear as Mrs. Eddy's in ascribing creation to mind as the producing cause.

In dismissing this phase of the subject, it will give force to our contention to notice that Spinoza, pantheist, atheist and infidel, held to the same dogma. He says: “The intellect of God, in so far as it is conceived to constitute God's essence, is, in reality, the cause of things, both of their essence and of their existence.”^[32] Mrs. Eddy, since she identifies mind with God, regards it as constituting the essence of God. Intellectus with Spinoza corresponds to nous with the Neoplatonists and these two words of the Latin and Greek correspond to Mrs. Eddy's divine Mind.

Mrs. Eddy teaches that creation is eternal. In this conception two doctrines intimately related are involved, namely, that what God creates is eternal, that is, it is without beginning and without end, and that the act of creation also is eternal, that is, it is timeless. It will be seen, therefore, that what Mrs. Eddy means by creation is something wholly unlike what is commonly meant by the term. The word naturally suggests the bringing into existence of something that did not exist before, and accordingly both the created thing and the creating act are marked with temporal limitations. Mrs. Eddy's unnatural use of this word, as of others that we have noted and will yet notice, is the result of her bondage to the Neoplatonists who treat the subject of creation as she does. First, as to the eternity of the world.

Mrs. Eddy says: “God created all through Mind and made all perfect and eternal;”^[33] “All creations of spirit are eternal;”^[34] “God's thoughts are perfect and eternal.”^[35] Do not forget that Mrs. Eddy considers God's thoughts to be creations. Recall the quotation from Mrs. Eddy above given that “infinite Mind is the creator and creation is the infinite image or idea emanating from this Mind” and connect with it this other: “The infinite never began nor will it ever end.”^[36] Again, note the language of Mrs. Eddy: “God, without the image and likeness of Himself, would be a non-entity, or Mind inexpressed.”^[37] So creation co-exists with God and is eternal, as he is eternal,^[38] for in pantheism nature is identical with God. It is the phenomenon, or God manifested, as Mrs. Eddy expressly states.^[39]

Why then speak of the creation of the world at all, since it is as improper as it would be to speak of God being created? It is a “trick of the trade.” Mrs. Eddy must follow her masters. In commenting on Genesis 1:1 she says expressly that we are not to understand that anything was really begun, that “the infinite has no beginning" and that the infinite is both “God and man including the universe”; that creation therefore means simply the “unfolding of Spiritual ideas and their identities.”^[40] In others words, the creation spoken of in Genesis is no creation at all. It is not even anything like creation. It is education; it is the awakening of intelligence in man. It is man exercising the power of understanding and consciousness. Mrs. Eddy says: “Whatever seems to be a new creation is but the discovery of some distant idea of Truth.”^[41] In creation, as described in Genesis we are not to understand that God was doing anything but that man was doing a lot of powerful thinking. The student of philosophy will discern that Mrs. Eddy in this interpretation or rather caricature of the record of creation found in Genesis, is reproducing Hegel, who under the influence of Neoplatonism attempted to apply the principle of evolution to Genesis according to which the sin of our first parents becomes a “fall up” rather than a “fall down.” The first sin was simply the springing up of “consciousness” in man by which he is differentiated from the brute.^[42]

Plotinus says: “This world, therefore, never began, nor will ever cease to be.”^[43] Proclus says : “From all that has been said, therefore, it is easy to infer, that the Demiurgus produces eternally; that the world is perpetual, according to a perpetuity which is extended through the whole of time.”^[44] Proclus explains and develops the thought of Plato that the Demiurgus in making the world “looked to an eternal paradigm.”^[45] That is, the creator made the world according to an eternal pattern or plan.

Here we must renew our knowledge of Plato or form a slight acquaintance with him. This great thinker spoke often of two worlds. One is the world of paradigms or patterns, of forms or ideas. The other is the world of material things. The former is often referred to by present day speakers as “Plato's eternal world of ideas.” For in this world no past nor future is known. But the world of things is subject to time. Again, the world of ideas was regarded as unchanging and perfect and the world of things as changing and imperfect. Ideas have no beginning and no end; things originate and vanish. Consequently the world of ideas was considered real and the world of things unreal. However contrary to common thinking this is, it was Plato's way of thinking to which, when touched up with a lively colour added by the Neoplatonists, Mrs. Eddy conforms perfectly.

To the conception of Plato the Neoplatonists, who used his philosophy for religious purposes, added the doctcrine that these ideas of the eternal world should be considered as ideas or thoughts of God.^[46] So this world of ideas, which becomes the one world of reality, can very naturally and easily be considered as a world created by the divine mind or brought into being by divine thinking, since it is simply a world of thoughts or ideas. And since the divine mind eternally thinks, this world is eternally created. Since God is identical with mind and mind by its very nature is ever active or is ever thinking, then this world is coexistent with God. This is Neoplatonism and it is Christian Science.

Mrs. Eddy thus contrasts these two worlds as Plato and his followers did: “Eternal things (verities) are God's thoughts as they exist in the spiritual realm of the real. Temporal things are the thoughts of mortals and are the unreal, being the opposite of the real or the spiritual and eternal;”^[47] “Things spiritual and eternal are substantial. Things material and temporal are insubstantial.”^[48] With such a conception of the real world, it is necessary that the Neoplatonists and Mrs. Eddy consider it eternal.

A quotation from Spinoza, when carefully considered, will sharpen the point to the parallel that we are now tracing. He says: “All the decrees of God have been ratified from all eternity by God himself. If it were otherwise, God would be convicted of imperfection or change. But in eternity there is no such thing as when, before or after; hence it follows solely from the perfection of God, that God never can decree, or never could have decreed anything but what is; that God did not exist before his decrees and would not exist without them.”^[49] Spinoza means by the decrees of God simply his ideas or thoughts; for he identifies the will of God with the intellect of God.^[50] Spinoza, like the Neoplatonists and Mrs. Eddy, considers God's thoughts as creations and assigns them to the sphere of eternity, where “there is no such thing as when, before or after.” Proclus fourteen centuries and Spinoza two centuries ago stated Mrs. Eddy's position very accurately for her when they taught that God's thoughts, which are to be considered as creations, are eternal.

The eternity of the world requires as has been said that the act also by which it was or is created be considered eternal. This idea has no doubt been suggested already to the reader, for it is implied in certain of the quotations from Mrs. Eddy and also in the one from Spinoza just given.

The striking parallel that we now make is that the Neoplatonists and Mrs. Eddy deny to the creator deliberation and purpose. They must do so, as such mental acts as these would require creation to be subject to time, which it is not. A creation subject to time is to them unreal. We are considering the real creation.

The fact that Mrs. Eddy denies purpose to God has already been established. Here we are considering the relation of the fact to creation. Mrs. Eddy cannot conceive of God as meditating over what he will do, as planning or purposing to do anything. For these acts imply the lapse of time and the divine mind is not subject to time. It is eternal. What God creates is co-existent with himself. All this is in the sentences from her already cited in the treatment of this topic. Recall also the one in which Mrs. Eddy identifies in the divine being foreordination, foreknowledge and knowledge.^[51] In her god they are one and are not to be distinguished as different mental activities. In explaining creation as described in Genesis Mrs. Eddy refuses to let “evening” and “morning” designate time.^[52] She thinks “Chronological data” should not be thought of; that “time-tables” of birth and death shorten life;^[53] that “time is a mortal thought,”^[54] that is, that the sense of time is error, not truth. Accordingly, the divine act of creation must be eternal. Therefore, Mrs. Eddy cannot think of God as creating anything now or at any given time, though her metaphysical acumen was not sharp enough to enable her to see that if we cannot think of an eternal creation as being at any time in progress we cannot think of it as being at any time finished.^[55]

The conception that we are now dealing with is far-reaching in its importance not only as explaining the character of God but also as explaining the character of creation; that is, the creation of the real world. We do well to pause here until we feel the force of this conception. If God is without purpose then there is no design in nature. This sweeping inference must follow from the assumptions that the world is without temporal relations and that its maker is principle, not a person, and that the agency by which it is created is mind only or intellect without will. This matter will become plainer when we come to study the psychology of Christian Science. At present consider that the view that the world is created by the divine mind, in which there is only understanding or consciousness^[56] and to which time is unknown, since the ideas of the divine mind are eternal,^[57] necessarily involves the view that the creating act is eternal, that is, timeless. In all this Mrs. Eddy is logical and consistent.

But the point of interest to us is that her masters, the Neoplatonists, teach the same thing with the same logic and consistency. Their language should be carefully considered. Plotinus, explaining how intellect produced the world, says: “If we suppose it to operate by inquiry, its energy could not be spontaneous and truly its own; but its essence would be similar to that of an artificer, who does not derive from himself that which he produces, but provides it as something adventitious by learning and inquiry;”^[58] “If, likewise, it is necessary that intellect should be the maker of this universe, it will not intellectually perceive things in that which does not yet exist, in order that it may produce it.”^[59] Proclus, indulging in the same speculation, says: “When we say of the Demiurgus himself, that he consults, that he energizes dianoetically (that is, discursively), and that he makes these things prior to those, we relinquish the truth of things;”^[60] “It is not lawful for him (the Demiurgus) to look to natures posterior to himself;”^[61] “The Demiurgus of wholes looking to himself and always abiding in his own accustomed manner, produces the whole world, totally and at once collectively, and with eternally invariable sameness; for he does not make (create things) at one time, and at another not, lest he should depart from eternity.”^[62] Spinoza as usual expresses the thought better for us. Condemning the views of some he says: “These latter persons seem to set up something beyond God, which does not depend on God, but which God in acting looks to as an exemplar, or which he aims at as a definite goal.”^[63]

The reader will excuse me for insisting on his discerning the far-reaching import of these quotations from the Neoplatonists and Spinoza. It is hardly possible to overestimate their bearing on the eternal character of the world, the timeless process of the creative act and the nature of the divine mind which necessitates such a process or is thereby revealed.

Hear Mrs. Eddy on this subject once more: “For God to know is to be; that is, what He knows must truly and eternally exist;”^[64] “He who is all understands all. He can have no knowledge or inference but his own consciousness;”^[65] “What Deity foreknows Deity must foreordain, else he is not omnipotent and like ourselves, He foresees events which are contrary to His creative will.”^[66] Her statement that “What Deity foreknows Deity must foreordain,” is equal to the statement that what God knows he must create.

In the above language Mrs. Eddy expresses briefly what is amplified and illustrated in the foregoing sentences from Plotinus, Proclus and Spinoza. The thought is this: God knows nothing as going to happen; what he knows is; he did not choose in making the world between two or more plans; he does not deliberate; he forms no picture of what could be but is not; he has no imagination; he works toward no ideal; he has no purpose, for the realization of a purpose would render him subject to time, that is imperfect, or it would involve the knowledge of something that does not yet exist and such knowledge would be other than consciousness which only is divine knowledge. When men make things they are subject to all these mental conditions but we must have no anthropomorphic conception of God. Mrs. Eddy says: “Material senses and human conceptions would translate spiritual ideas into material beliefs, and would say that an anthropomorphic God, instead of infinite Principle * * * is the father of the rain,”^[67] etc.

Now hear again Mrs. Eddy's masters. Plotinus considers it absurd to suppose that the Demiurgus or the creative cause should make the world by means of the imagination and asks derisively: “How did it make it, through arrogance and audacity and in short through imagination”?^[68] Spinoza combats the view of some who “without knowing it attribute imagination to God”^[69] and contends that God “cannot form fictitious hypotheses.”^[70] With this faith Spinoza courageously undertakes “to overthrow this doctrine of final cause (in nature) utterly.”^[71] Such is the way of idealistic pantheists, ancient and modern.

There are a number of conclusions that follow from the doctrine of the eternal creation of the world. They are of interest to us not merely because they are logically deduced from it but especially because they are advocated by both the Neoplatonists and Mrs. Eddy and therefore argue the more strongly her dependence on them.

The first is that the world is necessarily created. There could be no other world and the one that is had to be. This necessity is that by which a thinking mind must have its object of thought, that by which a definite cause must have its definite effect, that by which a thing possesses its essential quality or qualities, that by which one correlative involves the other. Mrs. Eddy says: “What Deity foreknows Deity must foreordain.”^[72] It is not a temporal but a logical foreknowing that Mrs. Eddy has in mind and any disciple of hers has the privilege of explaining if possible what such contradictory terms may mean. But notice that she says God must create what he foreknows. Since he foreknows all or “understands all”^[73] then he had to create all that is. And since he has already created all that ever will be or can be, he had to create the world and had to create it as it is. Mrs. Eddy's god is subject to this little word, “must.” Mrs. Eddy puts her god, who she says is omnipotent, under compulsion. He is subject to the law of necessity.

Again Mrs. Eddy says: “What He knows must truly and eternally exist;”^[74] “Under divine Providence there can be no accidents;”^[75] “If God, who is Life, were parted for a moment from his reflection, man, during that moment there would be no divinity reflected. The Ego would be unexpressed, and the Father would be childless,—no Father.”^[76] So the world which is God's complete reflection exists as necessarily as God does.

Plotinus says: “This world was produced, not from any certain reasoning power concluding that it should be made, but from a necessity that a secondary nature should inseparably attend that which is primary and the examplar;”^[77] “The world was formed by the same kind of necessity as the shadow (is formed) by any substance obstructing the light, and was not constructed by the counsel of reason (that is, discursive reason), but from a more excellent essence, naturally generating an offspring similar to itself.”^[78] Proclus has the same thought and attributes it to Plato.^[79]

But here again Spinoza's language helps to clinch our contention. He says: “All that is in the power of God (and with Spinoza power of God is synonymous with intellect of God) necessarily is;”^[80] “Things could not have been brought into being by God in any manner or in any order different from that which has in fact obtained.”^[81] Spinoza too puts his deity under necessity. He, two hundred years ago, argued that for God to know is for him to create, as does Mrs. Eddy. The Neoplatonism of Christian Science betrays the finishing touches of Spinoza. The world's profoundest pantheist and subtlest infidel indulged in the same kind of “revelation,” that the author of Christian Science enjoyed.

Another conclusion that follows from the eternity of the world, as also from other theories of Mrs. Eddy and her masters, is that the world is perfect. Nature considered in its entirety is without defect. Since the world is God's idea or the object of his thinking and since God's thinking is perfect, his idea or his thought is perfect. In other words the world is perfect. Since the noumenon and the phenomena constitute God, and God is perfect, the phenomena or the world must be perfect. With Mrs. Eddy and the Neoplatonists the real, the eternal, and the perfect are the same. Imperfection is simply the absence of reality. It may be that the student has already noticed in the quotations from Mrs. Eddy how she in speaking of the world often applies to it both the adjectives, perfect and eternal. This is natural, inasmuch as in her conception what is real is both perfect and eternal and so one adjective implies the other. All this is revealed in the following sentence: “All the real is eternal. Perfection underlies reality. Without perfection nothing is wholly real.”^[82]

As to the perfection of the world Mrs. Eddy says: “God created all through Mind and made all perfect and eternal;”^[83] “God's thoughts are perfect and eternal ;”^[84] “Whatever is valueless or baneful. He did not make, — hence its unreality.”^[85]

Turn now to the Neoplatonists. Plotinus says: “If we apply the ears of our intellect to the world we shall, perhaps, hear it thus addressing us: ‘There is no doubt but I was produced by divinity, from whence I am formed perfect * * * entirely sufficient to myself, and destitute of nothing;’ ”^[86] “The universe, however, was never once a child so as to be imperfect.”^[87] Spinoza says: “Things have been brought into being by God in the highest perfection, inasmuch as they have necessarily followed from a most perfect nature * * * for if things had been brought into being in any other way, we should have to assign to God a nature different from that which we are bound to attribute to him from the consideration of an absolutely perfect being.”^[88] So he identifies perfection and reality.^[89] It should be noted that the Neoplatonists, like Mrs. Eddy, argue the perfection of the world from the perfection of its creator.

Related to the perfection of the world is the theory of the harmony of the universe. Mrs. Eddy and the Neoplatonists teach that when nature is considered as a whole there is no discord. The reader can readily see how this theory serves well Mrs. Eddy's contention about disease. It is disorder, and as all disorder, derangement or inharmony is unreal or the absence of reality, disease must be a non-entity.

Mrs. Eddy says: “This Mind (divine mind) creates no element nor symbol of discord and decay;”^[90] “The divine Principle and idea (which for Mrs. Eddy constitute the real universe) constitute spiritual harmony,—heaven and eternity. In the universe of Truth matter is unknown. No position of error enters there;”^[91] “Reality is spiritual, harmonious, immutable, immortal, divine, eternal.”^[92]

Plotinus speaking of the “intelligible world”, or of nature spiritually considered as Mrs. Eddy would phrase it, says: “Nothing preternatural is there.”^[93]

Proclus says: “To nature, indeed, considered as a whole, nothing is preternatural; because all natural productive powers are derived from it. But to nature which ranks as a part, one thing is according to, and another contrary to nature.”^[94] Spinoza writes to Oldenburg: “Each part of nature agrees with its whole, and is associated with the remaining parts. For as to the means whereby the parts are really associated, and each part agrees with its whole, I told you in my former letter that I am in ignorance. To answer such a question, we should have to know the whole of nature and its several parts;”^[95] “I do not attribute to nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion.”^[96]

The student should be reminded that this theory of the absolute and present perfection of the world has its basis in Plato's doctrine that in the world of ideas and paradigms, which is the world of realities, there is no defect nor evil, as Plotinus in a concise paragraph explains.^[97] As Mrs. Eddy and the Neoplatonists explain moral evil and physical evil, or natural defects, in the same way, namely, by denying their existence, and as this chapter is growing too long, I defer further discussion of this matter to the chapter on Ethics.

At this point it is proper to speak of Mrs. Eddy's doctrine of the beauty of the world. To her the beautiful is the same as the perfect, and the eternal. To her beauty is the same as Plato's intellectual beauty. It is the beauty of a circle, not of the one that we see with our eyes, but of the one that is in our mind, which is a perfect circle. It is the beauty of the geometrical truth that the three angles of a triangle make two right angles, which is true not of the triangular figures that we see but of the ideal ones. Mrs. Eddy says: “Beauty, as well as truth, is eternal; but the beauty of material things passes away, fading and fleeting as mortal belief;”^[98] “The recipe for beauty is to have less illusion and more soul, to retreat from the belief of pain or pleasure in the body into the unchanging calm and glorious freedom of spiritual harmony.”^[99] It is clear from these sentences that to Mrs. Eddy what is really beautiful is eternal, and that it is the harmony which is spiritually or intellectually discerned, that is, it is perfection. Proclus following Plato closely asserts often in his commentary on Timaeus that the world is “most beautiful” because produced by the “Demiurgus, the best of causes”. Proclus interprets Plato as meaning “intelligible beauty” which is the same as perfection.^[100]

In the quotation above from Spinoza in which he denies beauty and confusion to the world, that is, the real world, he is thinking of relative beauty not absolute or intellectual beauty. He could as easily deny perfection as this kind of beauty to the world. He explains his use of these words. He says: “As good and evil are only relative terms, so also is perfection unless we take perfection for the essence of the thing.”^[101] If, then, one uses the word perfection to express the essence or reality of the world he speaks correctly. Spinoza also explains his use of the word beauty, thus: “Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or deformed, ordered or confused.”^[102] Spinoza is defining strictly his use of the word beautiful. He would apply it to things of time and sense. To him it is a relative term and expresses what Mrs. Eddy calls in her sentence above a “mortal belief.” Consequently Spinoza does not use it to express an eternal essence. If he had chosen to use it for both kinds of beauty as Mrs. Eddy did, he could have used it also for intellectual or absolute beauty as the Neoplatonists did. But he preferred for the sake of clearness to designate this idea by the term perfection. This is said to make it plain that at this point there is no difference in thought but only in terms between Mrs. Eddy and Spinoza. She is very loyal.

Here we should pause to notice that the author of Christian Science, the Neoplatonists and Spinoza identify four great ideas which they apply to the world; reality, eternity, perfection, beauty. We have the right to ask if this agreement is accidental. If not, the first writer only in point of time can be an original thinker.

It no doubt is a surprise to many to find that Mrs. Eddy rejects miracles. But from her view of nature she must do so as also the Neoplatonists did.

She says: “The so-called miracles of Jesus did not specially belong to a dispensation now ended;”^[103] “The good is natural and primitive. It is not miraculous to itself;”^[104] “On this spiritually scientific basis Jesus explained his cures, which appeared miraculous to outsiders;”^[105] “Miracles are impossible in Science, and here Science takes issue with popular religions.”^[106] So then what Jesus did seemed miraculous to those that looked on but it was not really so. It was not miraculous to those who had understanding. It was miraculous to the ignorant and uninitiated only.

Why does Mrs. Eddy reject miracles? Because she is more philosophic than Biblical. She is following the Neoplatonists who, as we have seen, allow nothing to be preternatural or supernatural. Speaking of the healings of Jesus and of Christian Science, she says: “Now, as then, these mighty works are not supernatural but supremely natural.”^[107] Speaking of the resurrection of Christ, she says: “It was not a supernatural act. On the contrary it was a divinely natural act;”^[108] “A miracle fulfills God's law but does not violate that law.”^[109]

Now who said that a miracle is something supernatural? Who has defined a miracle as an event that is superior to or contrary to or a violation of the laws of nature? May be some loose-speaking theologian did that in the hearing of Mrs. Eddy, but as she philosophizes about the matter just as Spinoza does I prefer to think she is indebted to him for her “revelation" on this subject.

Spinoza discussing the question of miracles says: “Nature cannot be contravened, * * * she preserves a fixed and immutable order.”^[110] So if we define a miracle as an event contrary to the laws of nature, there is no miracle.

Some delight so to reason. Stated in syllogistic form the argument is as follows: Nature includes all reality and all events past and present. Everything that has happened is a part of nature and since it is a part of nature it is according to nature. Therefore miracles being contrary to nature are not or are impossible. So the record of miracles in the New Testament can not be believed.

David Hume so reasoned. Sitting in his study in England in the 18th century he could by this cunning but craven begging of the question and this ingenius assumption, affirm what was done or not done in Palestine in the first century. If there ever was a raw insult flung in the face of reason, and that, too, in the name of logic, this is it. Professing to think as a philosopher he assumes in his premises the very thing that is to be proved. Famous as a historian he undertakes by means of dialectics alone to say what was not a fact. We can easily conclude that an event which is defined as impossible has never happened. Some great men “make history” but David Hume proposed to unmake it. It is a case of adjusting fact to philosophy not philosophy to fact. Had it not served so well the prejudices of skeptics and infidels this specimen of deduction would have given Hume fame not as a great logician but as a smart sophist.^[111]

His other argument against miracles, namely, that no amount of testimony can make a miracle credible, inasmuch as it is more probable that men lie than that miracles happen, is another specimen of shameful sophistry. By this kind of reasoning I cannot believe any man who claims, for example, to have reached the North Pole; for as lying is very common and reaching the North Pole is confessedly a very rare occurrence, if in fact it ever took place, there being only two persons in the history of the world that even claimed to have done it, I as a cautious reasoner, must, as Hume would argue, weigh the probability of false testimony against the probability of the fact in question and decide the case off-hand against the claimants. I need not trouble myself to investigate the records of Cook and Peary. They have claimed what is impossible for scientific credibility. The only difference that can be between them is that the one may be a wicked charlatan and the other a deluded ignoramus. And more, this must be our judgment forever, until those who claim to have reached the North Pole out-number all the world's liars. When can we ever believe a poor fellow who achieves this heroic deed?

When an empirical philosopher, as Hume was, attempts to settle a question of fact, of history, by means of logic, he deserves the contempt of logicians. Christianity has nothing to fear from learned infidelity, except its sophistry. How is it that so many have accepted his statement as the conclusion of a profound thinker? What is the matter with Hume's admirers?

But Spinoza and Mrs. Eddy take a different turn and one more sly and subtle. Though affirming as the Neopatonists do and as Hume does, that all is natural and that nothing is contrary to or above nature they do not reject the New Testament narratives of miracles. No, they were actual events and natural, “divinely” and “supremely” so. But they were also miraculous events, that is, events to be wondered at by the ignorant. The miracles of the Bible are miracles to the unlearned only, not to the initiated and wise ones. They were phenomena that were not understood by the masses but nothing more.

Read the quotations again from Mrs. Eddy and see that I am rightly interpreting her. Whether or not this method of explaining the miracles be regarded as brilliant, it is certain that it is not original with Mrs. Eddy. It is another one of her “revelations” that Spinoza also was favored with. Remember that she says: “All Science is a revelation.” He says: “A miracle is an event of which the causes cannot be explained by the natural reason through a reference to ascertained workings of nature; but since miracles were wrought according to the understanding of the masses, who are wholly ignorant of the working of nature, it is certain that the ancients took for a miracle whatever they could not explain by the method adopted by the unlearned in such cases.”^[112]

When we speak then of the miracles of the Bible our attention should be directed not to the greatness of the work that was done but to the obtuseness of the minds that marvelled at it. Miracle becomes another name for ignorance. Spinoza says: “I have taken miracles and ignorance as equivalent terms.”^[113] Jesus and the apostles did things that caused the mouths of their dull contemporaries to gape open in blank amazement. The little secret by which they did it, however, they were not frank enough to disclose. The honor of doing this was reserved for another and has finally been conferred on Mary Baker G. Eddy per Spinoza, the Jew, assisted materially, that is, spiritually, by certain heathen philosophers; I mean, directed wholly by them.

Mrs. Eddy, like Spinoza, is a Neoplatonist that holds only verbally to the Bible. That is, she is a pagan bird displaying the bright plumage of Christian nomenclature. Ralph Waldo Emerson, I said, had too much honor to do this. He grew his own feathers. But underneath the livery in which they do their fussing and strutting respectively, is much unsavory meat.

1. S. and H. p. 151. cf. p. 71.
2. Retros. and Intros. p. 40.
3. S. and H. p. 331.
4. S. and H. p. 273.
5. S. and H. p. 277.
6. S. and H. p. viii.
7. S. and H. p. 257. cf. Retros. and Intros. p. 39f.
8. 2. 4. 6. Tr. by Fuller.
9. S. and H. p. 512.
10. 1. 8. 10. Tr. by Fuller, cf. 1. 8. 7.
11. 1. 8. 4. Tr. by Fuller.
12. Cf. No and Yes. p. 43.
13. Cf. New International Encyclopedia. Article, Emerson.
14. Cf. Retros. and Intros. p. 99.
15. Cf. S. and H. pp. 245 ff and 261.
16. Cf. Principles of Human Knowledge. Paragraphs 34-36.
17. S. and H. p. 260.
18. S. and H. p. 126.
19. Select Works of Plotinus. p. XLIV.
20. In Essay, Self-Control.
21. S. and H. p. 255. Cf. Retros. and Intros. p. 94.
22. S. and H. p. 256f. cf. p. 143.
23. S. and H. p. 262. cf. p. 207.
24. S. and H. p. 502f.
25. S. and H. p. 513.
26. 5. 9. 5. cf. 5. 9. 4.
27. 5. 6. 6.
28. On Tim. Bk. 2. (Vol. I. p. 225.)
29. On Tim. Bk. 2. (Vol. I. 237.)
30. On Tim. Bk. 5. (Vol. II. p. 354.)
31. Cf. Plotinus. 5. 1. 8.
32. Eth. 1. 17. Note. cf. 1. 33. Note 2.
33. Retros. and Intros. p. 94.
34. S. and H. p. 287.
35. S. and H. p. 286.
36. S. and H. p. 245.
37. S. and H. p. 303. cf. 306.
38. Cf. S. and H. pp. 267 and 336.
39. Cf. S. and H. p. 114.
40. S. and H. p. 502f.
41. S. and H. p. 263. cf. p. 504.
42. Cf. his Philosophy of History. Part 3, Sec. 3, Chap. 2.
43. 2. 9. 7.
44. On Tim. Bk. 2. (Vol. I. p. 308.)
45. On Tim. Bk. 2. (Vol. I. p. 276. cf. p. 222 ff.)
46. Cf. Windelband's Hist. of Phil. 2. 2. 19. 4.
47. S. and H. p. 337.
48. S. and H. p. 335. cf. pp. 264 and 269.
49. Eth. 1. 33. Note 2.
50. Cf. Eth. 1. 17. Note.
51. Cf. Unity of Good. p. 22.
52. Cf. S. and H. p. 504.
53. Cf. S. and H. p. 246.
54. S. and H. p. 598.
55. Cf. S. and H. p. 206.
56. S. and H. p. 250.
57. S. and H. p. 88.
58. 3. 2. 2.
59. 5. 9. 5. cf. 5. 9. 7.
60. On Tim. Bk. 2. (Vol. I. p. 293.)
61. On Tim. Bk. 2. (Vol. I. p. 364.) cf. Bk. 4. (Vol. II. p. 257.)
62. On Tim. Bk. 2. (Vol. I. p. 237.)
63. Eth. 1. 33. Note 2. cf. Eth. 1. Appendix.
64. No and Yes. p. 24.
65. No and Yes. p. 25.
66. Unity of Good. p. 22.
67. S. and H. p. 257.
68. 2. 9. 11.
69. Eth. 1. Appendix.
70. Imp. of the Und. p. 19.
71. Eth. 1. Appendix.
72. Unity of Good. p. 22.
73. Cf. No and Yes. p. 25.
74. No and Yes. p. 24.
75. S. and H. p. 424.
76. S. and H. p. 306. cf. 303.
77. 3. 2. 2.
78. 3. 2. 3.
79. Cf. On Tim. Bk 3. (Vol. I. p. 439.)
80. Eth. 2. 3. Proof.
81. Eth. 1. 33.
82. S. and H. p. 353.
83. Retros. and Intros. p. 94.
84. S. and H. p. 286.
85. S. and H. p. 525.
86. 3. 2. 3.
87. 2. 9. 17.
88. Eth. 1. 33. Note 2. cf. Letter, 15.
89. Cf. Eth. 2. Definition, 6.
90. S. and H. p. 503.
91. S. and H. p. 503.
92. S. and H. p. 335.
93. 5. 9. 10.
94. Nature of Evil. 3. (p. 117.)
95. Letter, 15.
96. Letter, 15.
97. Cf. 5. 9. 10.
98. S. and H. p. 247.
99. S. and H. p. 247f.
100. On Tim. Bk. 2. (Vol. I. p. 337.)
101. Cog. Met. 1. 6.
102. Letter, 15.
103. S. and H. p. 123.
104. S. and H. p. 128.
105. S. and H. p. 138.
106. S. and H. p. 83.
107. S. and H. Preface, p. xi.
108. S. and H. p. 44.
109. S. and H. p. 134f.
110. Theo.-Pol. Treat. Chap. 6.
111. Cf. his essay on Miracles.
112. Cf. Theo.-Pol. Treat. Chap. 6.
113. Letter, 23.