The Origin of Christian Science/Chapter 6

by Thomas Polhill Stafford

 

CHAPTER VI.

ETHICS.

We come now to trace the last parallel between Christian Science and Neoplatonism. It is a parallel in ethical principles.

Since many of these principles are involved in the subjects already discussed and have been dwelt upon more or less and shown to have their origin in Neoplatonism, this chapter may be made briefer than the preceding ones.

It will clear the field somewhat for us to notice that Christian Science is not only not Christianity but that it is a question whether or not it should be classified as a religion at all. It is a philosophy, a system of metaphysical and ethical principles.

The proof of this position is that the doctrine of mercy, of forgiveness, which Christian Science rejects, belongs properly to what is termed religion. Mrs. Eddy says: “The destruction of sin is the divine method of pardon. * * * Being destroyed, sin needs no other form of forgiveness;”^[1] “The pardon of divine mercy is the destruction of error.”^[2] Christian Science knows no such thing as guilt, and has no need of mercy.

It follows naturally from this theory that, whatever salvation may be, it is obtained by works and so Mrs. Eddy teaches. The idea that Christ suffered as a substitute for us she vehemently rejects.^[3] Christ is the way-shower and nothing more. The notion that God's just wrath against sin can be appeased, whether it be an heathen belief or a Christian faith, she would consider a superstition. It is very natural therefore to find Mrs. Eddy following Plato and teaching the doctrine of purgatory or probation after death.^[4]

The highest ideals, therefore, of Christian Science are ethical, and this review of its ethical principles will render our survey of her teachings quite complete. We are compassing her entire body of doctrines. She has written much but she sets forth almost nothing that we do not take account of. There is in her books a monotonous repetition. Mrs. Eddy realized the value of “line upon line and precept upon precept,” though there be no change or advance in thought.

There is no parallel between Christian Science and Neoplatonism more striking and more fundamental than the theory that evil is a negation, the mere absence of reality. We have naturally touched upon this subject before, as it was unavoidable, but here we are to scrutinize it very carefully.

Let us recall that Neoplatonism and Christian Science are rigid monistic systems. They hold that there is harmony in the universe considered in its entirety. Sin or evil must be either discord in the universe or be no part of it. Since it cannot be the former, it follows that sin has no place in the universe. This is the same as saying it is the absence of reality.

Mrs. Eddy says: “Since God is All, there is no room for his unlikeness. God, Spirit, alone created all, and called it good. Therefore evil, being contrary to good, is unreal, and cannot be the product of God;”^[5] “Evil is nothing, no thing. Mind, nor power.”^[6]

This theory has its roots in the Platonic doctrine of ideas. The world of ideas constitutes the world of reality and in this world there is no discord. Since therefore evil is not in the world of reality it is unreal. Plotinus so reasons concerning the Platonic world of ideas. He says: “There is no paradigm of evil there (world of ideas). For evil here (in the world of sense) happens from indigence, privation, and defect.”^[7] The thought is that in the world of ideas which the Neoplatonists consider the realm of the divine mind, there is no principle of evil; but evil is simply the lack of such divine mind. To that degree to which one partakes of the divine mind or has understanding he has reality or is good; in so far as he comes short of it he lacks reality or is evil. Again Plotinus says: “Evil and depravity in the soul will be privation;”^[8] “The evil of the soul must be considered as the absence of good;”^[8] “If evil anywhere subsists, it must be found among non-entities, must be itself a certain species of non-entity.”^[9] Proclus keeps step with Plotinus and considers that there are not “in intellect paradigms of evils.”^[10] Proclus reasons in the same way as Mrs. Eddy does, saying: “Because good is the cause of all things, it is requisite that evil should have no subsistence among beings.”^[11] Compare this sentence carefully with the next to the last one given just above from Mrs. Eddy.

Spinoza repeating the thought of the Neoplatonists, as we may anticipate, says: “I cannot admit that sin and evil have any positive existence;”^[12] “Sin, which indicates nothing save imperfection, cannot consist in anything that expresses reality.”^[12]

In the following quotation one may see the same kind of reasoning that there is in the first sentence above from Mrs. Eddy. Compare them carefully. By essence Spinoza means simply being, positive existence or reality. He cannot mean anything else. He says: “I maintain in the first place, that God is absolutely and really the cause of all things which have essence, whatsoever they may be. If you can demonstrate that evil, error, crime, etc., have any positive existence, which expresses essence, I will fully grant you that God is the cause of crime, evil, error, etc. I believe myself to have sufficiently shown, that that which constitutes the reality of evil, error, crime, etc., does not consist in anything which expresses essence, and therefore we cannot say that God is its cause.”^[13] Notice that he argues that since God is the cause of all things that have essence or reality he cannot be the cause of evil, which does not have essence or reality, just as Mrs. Eddy reasons. Notice also, as we have had occasion to point out before as being true of both Christian Science and Neoplatonism, that he puts evil and error in the same category. Many sinners are ambitious to prove that a sin and a mistake are one and the same. Man's practical reason denies it, notwithstanding all the fumes of poison let loose in the moral atmosphere by all the sophists from Protagoras to Mary Baker G. Eddy.

In explaining still more the nature of evil Mrs. Eddy identifies it with matter or teaches that it has a material origin and in this also she follows the Neoplatonists. We have seen that she and they teach that matter is the opposite of mind, that matter is to mind as darkness is to light; that is, that matter is the absence or privation of mind. This is the very nature of matter. The nature therefore of error and of evil as privation is determined by their origin.

Mrs. Eddy says: “Matter and its claims of sin, sickness, and death are contrary to God, and cannot emanate from Him;”^[14] “As God Himself is good and is Spirit, goodness and spirituality must be immortal. Their opposites, evil and matter, are mortal error, and error has no creator. If goodness and spirituality are real, evil and materiality are unreal and cannot be the outcome of an infinite God, good;”^[15] “Banish all thoughts of disease and sin and of other beliefs included in matter.”^[16]

Plotinus says: “Whatever is perfectly destitute of good, and such is matter, is evil in reality, possessing no portion of good.”^[17]

Proclus says: “Matter is evil itself and that which is primarily evil.”^[18]

We see that both the position of the Neoplatonists and of Mrs. Eddy as to the nature of evil, and the reasoning by which it is established, are the same. Her language is different from theirs but her logic is identical with theirs.

In another aspect of the subject, namely, in the explanation of how the idea of evil arises in the mind, we find still another parallel between Neoplatonism and Christian Science. Since all reality is mind and since evil is a lack of reality or mind, the very idea of evil is a lack of mind or the failure to understand things perfectly. It is partial knowledge. The universe is harmonious and perfect. When it is fully compassed by the mind, there is no discord or inharmony or evil. Sin is falling below the divine ideal but not a transgression of the divine will. Now since God understands all things perfectly and since his understanding gives existence and reality to all that is, he has no idea of discord, inharmony or evil. Therefore God does not know evil. If he had the notion of it even it would be real.^[19] And the less knowledge of it we have the more divine-like we become and when we become wholly divine we will not have even a conception of it.

We have seen that Mrs. Eddy holds that Christ whose mind was perfect had no knowledge of sin.^[20] The very idea of it would render his mind imperfect. This is not a visionary, illogical fancy of Mrs. Eddy; she has got to hold to such a theory. Neoplatonism compels her.

How now does the notion of error or evil arise in the mind? It arises from a partial or incomplete view of things. It indicates no viciousness of will or disposition. It is simply a falling short in knowledge. It is not something positive and contrary to the will or wish of God, for God has neither will nor wish. Nor is it something contrary to his knowledge, for his knowledge constitutes all reality. As error is not knowing something contrary to divine knowledge but failing to have divine knowledge; as, for example, to split fine hairs still finer, error is not thinking that two and three make four but failing to see that they make five; so is it in regard to evil. As all virtue is simply a participation of the divine mind so all vice is simply a privation of the divine mind.

Mrs. Eddy says: “This is the nature of error. The mark of ignorance is on its forehead.”^[21] The point is that error is a not-knowing. In so far as we fail to know or have partial knowledge we err or sin. She says: “Material sense defines all things materially, and has a finite sense of the infinite.”^[22] Material sense is erring sinful sense, and this has a limited sense of the infinite or of God. For Mrs. Eddy this is the same as defining error or sin as a partial view of the universe. She says again: “Limitations are put off in proportion as the fleshly nature disappears.”^[23] This is equal to saying that a material or sinful sense of things is a limited or partial sense of things, for we are limited only by our beliefs or mortal thoughts.

The Neoplatonists theorize in the same fine fashion. Plotinus says: “He, therefore, who by a survey of the parts blames the whole, blames foolishly and without a cause; since it is necessary, as well by comparing the parts with the whole, to consider whether they accord, and are accommodated to the whole.”^[24] The thought is that when we consider nature in its entirety and as under the “form of eternity” there is no defect or sin. The notion of something being wrong results from a limited view of nature. Proclus says: “Our conduct, so far as pertains to what is universal, is right; but so far as it pertains to what is particular, is wrong;”^[25] “The same thing, indeed, will be evil to particulars, but good to wholes.”^[26] Spinoza follows suit gracefully and says: “Whenever, then, anything in nature seems to us ridiculous, absurd, or evil, it is because we have but a partial knowledge of things, and are in the main ignorant of the order and coherence of nature as a whole;”^[27] and he considers that when we call anything bad, we are led astray by the imagination which always sees things imperfectly.^[28]

Recall in this connection what has been said as to the perfection of the world.

According to the above position, as will be readily discerned, there is to God, who sees all things in their entirety and perfection, no evil. That Mrs. Eddy so teaches has been already sufficiently shown. Proclus says: “Wholes have a relation to parts different from that of parts to each other. To divinity therefore nothing is evil, not even of the things which are called evil.”^[29] And Spinoza says: “In the language of philosophy, it cannot be said that God desires anything of any man, or that anything is displeasing or pleasing to him: all these are human qualities and have no place in God;”^[30] “Adam's desire for earthly things was evil from our standpoint, but not from God's.”^[31] Then it was not really evil.

The same doctrine is proclaimed as to pain and sickness. Since they arise from matter or are a material or imperfect sense of things the very idea of them should be banished from the mind. This is the reason Mrs. Eddy would have us stifle all sympathy.^[32] She has a form of consistency. She will ride in the Neoplatonic chariot though it dash over into the abyss. Did Christian Scientists take this doctrine seriously they would become both inhuman and immoral. We may thank God that he has so made men and women that among the many wheels there may be in their heads there is generally there also a balance wheel, so that the whole machinery is not smashed to pieces. This balance wheel is a native practical judgment that affirms the reality of wrong doing and the reality of the penalty that must follow it. It is the voice of conscience that all the sophistry of all the ages cannot wholly muffle. But it must be acknowledged that not all Mrs. Eddy's disciples are free from the cruelty that her cult would inculcate.

We have done with the first part of this chapter, namely, the nature of evil or vice; and we turn now to consider the subject of virtue.

We are doubtless prepared for the statement that since vice consists in the absence of understanding or mind, virtue consists in the presence of understanding or mind. This is logical and it is the theory of both Christian Science and Neoplatonism. Let us not forget our convenient Christian Science funnel. Everything that has value or virtue must come out the little end as mind. If it will not do so it is without worth of any kind.

The one seemingly good thing that may be said about this ethical theory is that it simplifies wonderfully the moral problems of life. All we have to do is to think, to think profoundly or metaphysically, until we see that truth is all and error is nothing. And when we have done that we have reached the goal of existence, and need to do nothing more except to keep on so thinking. Yes, this is a very simple analysis of life. It enables us to consider questions of character as we would numbers in arithmetic and figures in geometry, as Spinoza ambitiously attempted to do. But the simplicity is secured at the sacrifice of the principal elements of human nature. When we eliminate from life and character all qualities and faculties except mathematical thinking by simply calling them non-entities, then it is a very easy matter to treat of moral relations and all relations. But the process is similar to that of an anatomist who says, “the flesh, the nerves and the blood are of no importance in the human system. They are non-entities; they do not really exist. We are concerned with what has reality, namely, the bones and nothing more.” This would be indeed a very convenient simplification of the subject of physiology. It is a good illustration of how the Neoplatonists and Mrs. Eddy dispose of human nature. Their system enables us to cast out with the calm countenance of superior wisdom, as rubbish for the scrap pile, all the perplexing problems of life and conduct; that is, it does so, after once we solve the difficult problem of getting their standpoint.

We will first notice briefly certain moral qualities as illustrations of the view that virtue is simply intellectuality and vice simply the want of it.

For the first example consider temperance. One is temperate or has self-control in so far as he has understanding. Intemperance is a lack of understanding.

Speaking of instances of reformation from “intemperance,” “tobacco using” and so forth, Mrs. Eddy says: “All this is accomplished by the grace of God * * * the effect of God understood.”^[33] It is true that she classifies temperance with “transitional qualities” between “unreality” and “reality”;^[34] but she is to be understood in that case as conceiving that temperance indicates a degree of intellectuality in one who has not yet fully escaped from the “physical” and completely established himself in the “spiritual.” In so far as he has done so he is temperate.

The Neoplatonists have the same conception of temperance. Plotinus says: “Temperance is an inward conversion to intellect.”^[35] Porphyry repeats with approval this definition, using the same words.^[36] “Inward conversion to intellect” means simply the reign of intellect in the soul. Spinoza considers temperance as a moral quality, “attributable to the mind in virtue of its understanding (intellect).”^[37] That is, when one is temperate, and in so far as he is temperate, he has understanding or is intellectual.

In a like manner Mrs. Eddy disposes of “moral courage”^[38] following Porphyry and Spinoza.

The student should consider how this theory as to temperance is related logically to and dependent upon the view that the human will, the exercise of which involves the sense of time, is a power for evil and should be kept inactive.

We have already discussed the virtue of love and shown that Mrs. Eddy and the Neoplatonists identify it with understanding.

We have also discussed sympathy and seen that both Neoplatonism and Christian Science deny that it is a virtue since it involves suffering. Mind cannot suffer. Sympathy therefore is not an activity of mind and cannot be a virtue. It has no place in the divine nature and should have none in ours.

Special consideration should be given to Mrs. Eddy's doctrine of desire. Desire that may be resolved into love and again resolved into understanding she, of course, would allow, as Spinoza does.^[39] But desire, as the word is properly understood, desire which is a wish or longing for something and requires the lapse of time for its satisfaction, she classifies as a weak and unworthy state of mind, as does Spinoza.^[40] Mrs. Eddy co-ordinates desire with “anxiety, ignorance, error” and “fear,”^[41] which of course are states of “mortal mind.”

There follows from this explanation of desire a doctrine of self-denial that belongs naturally to Christian Science and Neoplatonism. It is necessarily in both systems. If we do not find it expressed in words it is nevertheless there. And it is a marked and well-defined doctrine of self-denial. It is in short the eradication of and killing of desire. Since desire as such is a wrong state of mind we should not have it. This is not the control but the destruction of desire.

It is evident that this is not the Christian doctrine of self-denial which is that bad desires should be rooted out and good ones implanted, that low lusts should be supplanted by high aspirations and not at all that all desire should be stifled.

Many minds have discerned the oppressive atmosphere of Christian Science which such a kind of self-denial creates,—like the night already too dark made heavier and colder by a cloud distinctly felt if not clearly seen. Some have explained it as a Stoical element in Christian Science; but it seems that it does not come from Stoicism. Some think they detect an element of Buddhism in Christian Science and it seems that they are right in so thinking. The doctrine of the extinction of desire is original in and characteristic of Buddhism. Nirvana, the Buddhist's heaven, is attained when desire dies out of the soul. Buddha and Mrs. Eddy would get us to heaven by killing us. For when all desire is dead the person is dead. They would treat us as the economical master treated his mule. He taught him how to live on one straw a day but, to his owner's disappointment, so soon as he had acquired the habit he died.

Since we find the same extinction of desire taught in Neoplatonism and since Christian Science as a system is derived therefrom and since it has its logical place in both systems; the more plausible conclusion is that this ethical speculation came to Mrs. Eddy also through Neoplatonism.^[42]

There is good reason to believe that Plotinus had a knowledge of Buddhism. Indeed, that so great a seat of learning as Alexandria was in his day, should be ignorant of this mighty system of philosophy is quite improbable.

It is not necessary to prolong the catalogue of virtues and vices. The above examples are sufficient to demonstrate that the fundamental theory of Christian Science as to right and wrong conduct is identical with that of Neoplatonism.

If the student wishes to follow this parallel between Mrs. Eddy and Spinoza further into details, he may do so conveniently by comparing the terms found under the “First Degree” and “Second Degree” of Mrs. Eddy's “Scientific Translation of Mortal Mind”^[43] and Spinoza's Definitions of the Emotions.^[44] Take as a determining standard the element of time. The states of mind that arise from the sense of time or require the lapse of time for their satisfaction are imperfect and evil and are not acts of the understanding. Spinoza explains them as passive states of mind. Mrs. Eddy refers them to “Mortal Mind,” an expression she coins or uses to cover ignorance or hypocrisy with; for it explains nothing.

In Mrs. Eddy's doctrine of blessedness we find a parallel with Neoplatonism. It is an intellectual condition. It is the result of the activity of the understanding. It may be experienced in a greater or a less degree while we are in the body but it can be realized in fulness and permanency only when the spirit is released from its prison house of clay.

When Mrs. Eddy makes use of the terms salvation and regeneration, she means correct understanding, only this and nothing more. We have seen that she holds to salvation by works and since to her the only kind of works that have any value are activities of thought, the salvation she offers is obtained by thinking, thinking metaphysically, a la mathematical mode, if you please. The poor fool that cannot succeed at this is doomed to damnation. But as his condemnation is nothing more than just a continuing to be his fool-self, he need not be much disturbed. As Mrs. Eddy's salvation does not lift us very high so her damnation does not sink us very deep. Hallelujah! It is not “fire and brimstone.” It is only materiality, matter or mud tempered hot, cold or tepid just as one happens to think it is and exactly to his liking.

Mrs. Eddy says: “Through human consciousness, convince the mortal of his mistake in seeking material means for gaining happiness. 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 224 The Origin of Christian Science. saved.”^[45] The “bliss of a spiritual sense,” which sense as we have seen is the same as intellectual understanding, is salvation.

She says: “Audible prayer can never do the works of spiritual understanding, which regenerates;”^[46] “He to whom ‘the arm of the Lord’ is revealed will believe our report, and rise into newness of life with regeneration. This is having part in the atonement; this is the understanding.”^[47] It is clear from these sentences that Mrs. Eddy considers regeneration as the rise and reign of the understanding.

This doctrine of salvation may well excite our curiosity if not our contempt. When does such a mental activity arise? Is there no salvation for children who have not yet come to the age when such a psychic phenomenon is possible for them? Or for adults who never reach it? Since Mrs. Eddy considers Pentecost to be the advent of the understanding,^[48] what kind of salvation did the disciples or the world have before that date? If everybody is saved then everyone attains this mental condition if not in this life then in the future life. So Christian Science proclaims a post-mortem probation, as Plato did and every poor reformer does, that bases salvation on works and does not understand the grace of God. Mrs. Eddy says: “Every mortal at some period here or hereafter, must grapple with and overcome the mortal belief in a power opposed to God.”^[49]

It is a pitiable salvation that one may merit by his works, that is by his intellectuality, the greatest amount of which any one unsanctified by grace possesses is small enough and gaseous enough to make him swell and burst with conceit. Salvation is not something we do for ourselves but something done for us and in us by the power of God. Jesus Christ knowing the dire need of human nature and the infinite grace of God that is able to redeem it and to restore it to its lost Eden, and knowing Buddha, Plato, Aristotle and all the rest of the world's intellectual giants, and towering above them as the oak of the forest above the hazel brush beneath it and in contrast with them, conditioned salvation on an act that is in psychic and ethical harmony with the grace and greatness of salvation, on an act that does not merit it but makes it possible, possible for all, for children and simple minded folk, for Abraham and all before as well as since Pentecost, namely—hear it all ye learned of the earth and come down from your pride of knowledge; hear it, all ye foolish ones and come up to your birthright. What is it? It is faith. That is the word of the soul's emancipation. It is a talismanic word. “This is the victory that overcometh world * * * our faith.” That word made Luther and every hero since Abel great; because it opens the heart to the grace of God. It is the window of the soul looking heavenward and letting in the life-giving light. This word, this simple, beautiful, inspired and mighty word, Mrs. Eddy would empty of its meaning or resolve it into understanding. Out upon such wicked exegesis! To pagandom with it, whence Mrs. Eddy got it!

But we are concerned principally in showing that Mrs. Eddy's explanation of salvation and regeneration, which is one and the same to her, is an echo of Neoplatonism. Proclus says: “A conversion to the whole imparts salvation to everything” and “to this conversion prayer is of the greatest utility.”^[50] “A conversion to the whole,” in the case of a thinking being, would be simply a conception of the unity of the universe or the harmony of all things himself included. So Proclus says that “prayer is of the greatest utility” in effecting this result. Remember what Proclus and Mrs. Eddy understand prayer to be. It is not petition, as we have seen, but metaphysical meditation continued until one sees the unity of all things, or, what is the same thing in Neoplatonism and Christian Science, until he himself swings into harmony with the universal order. So Proclus, using language a little different but meaning the same, says: “The salvation of all things is through the participation of it (First Cause).”^[51] A thinking being participates in the first cause of all, or deity, by means of the activity of the understanding. Spinoza says: “My understanding is too small to determine all the means, whereby God leads men to the love of himself, that is, to salvation.”^[52] The love here referred to is that love which we have seen to be identical with intellectual understanding.^[53]

As to the experience of regeneration Spinoza has this explanation: “When we now perceive such activities, then can we in truth also say, that we are born again; for our first birth occurred, when we were united with the body, through which such activities and movements of the spirit arise. But this, our other or second birth will take place, when we take notice of altogether different activities in us, namely, activities of love, corresponding to the knowledge of immaterial objects, between which activities there is as great a difference as there is between the material and the immaterial, flesh and spirit. And this can with even more right and truth be called the second birth, because there follows first out of this love and union an eternal and unchangeable existence, as we will show.”^[54]

That Spinoza in this language explains the second birth or regeneration as Mrs. Eddy does is evident without comment.

In the highest form of blessedness or the doctrine of the greatest good we find another parallel between Neoplatonism and Christian Science. It should be considered first that the state of blessedness is found in a condition of mind and secondly that the special force of the parallel lies in the fact that both systems place it in the same special kind of mind-state.

Explained in the simplest language the writer can command the position is as follows: All reality is one; and the realization of this in thought is the highest possible attainment. When we are cognizant of limitations of time and sense, of physical conditions, of anything finite or even of ourselves as something other than deity or mind or universal reality or as some finite limitation of it we are in an imperfect state of mind or of character. Therefore, freeing ourselves from these notions or delusion and understanding the unity, infinity and identity of reality, ourselves included, is the highest blessedness, the greatest good, the end of existence.

Mrs. Eddy says: “To reach heaven, the harmony of being, we must understand the divine principle of being;”^[55] “To be present with the Lord is to have, not mere emotional ecstacy or faith, but the actual demonstration and understanding of Life as revealed in Christian Science;”^[56] “Spiritual sense is a conscious, constant capacity to understand God;”^[57] “Breaking away from the mutations of time and sense, you will neither lose the solid objects and ends of life nor your own identity. Fixing your gaze on the realities supernal, you will rise to the spiritual consciousness of being;”^[58] “Every step towards goodness is a departure from materiality;”^[59] “It should be thoroughly understood that all men have one Mind, one God and Father, one Life, Truth, and Love. Mankind will become perfect in proportion as this fact becomes apparent;”^[60] “Mortality will cease when man beholds himself God's reflection, even as man sees his reflection in a glass;”^[61] “Immortal man was and is God's image or idea, even the infinite expression of infinite Mind.”^[62]

At the risk of a wearying repetition I remind the student that in these sentences Mrs. Eddy teaches that heaven is a state of intellectuality; that we approach it as we free ourselves from the mutations and limitations of time and sense; that man and God are one principle and that man approaches perfection or blessedness as he realizes this fact; that man is related to God as the image in the mirror is to the form it reflects and in so far as we realize this truth we escape from mortality or imperfection.

Now let us hear the Neoplatonists.

Plotinus says: “With respect to the good, either the knowledge of, or contact with it, is the greatest of things;”^[63] “Perfect and true life flourishes in an intellectual nature;”^[64] “It is requisite, that the soul of him who ascends to the good, should then become intellect, and that he should commit his soul to, and establish it in intellect.”^[65]

Proclus says: “He therefore who lives according to the will of the father (the Demiurgus or Intellect) and preserves the intellectual nature, which was imparted to him from thence immutable, is happy and blessed;”^[66] “Souls of a fortunate destiny, giving themselves to intellect * * * are permanently established in good; and no evil is present with them, nor ever will be.”^[67]

The first source of this speculation, it seems, is to be found in Aristotle's doctrine of divine contemplation, as a rational activity, in which is “eternal blessedness.”^[68]

The Neoplatonists, like Mrs. Eddy, regard all so-called material knowledge and all limitation of time and sense as not only not a help but a hindrance to the attainment of this blessed state.

Plotinus says: “Since the soul is in an evil condition when mingled with the body, becoming similarly passive and concurring in opinion with it in all things, it will be good and possess virtue, if it neither consents with the body, but energizes alone (and this is to perceive intellectually and to be wise) , nor is similarly passive with it.”^[69] He holds that one may have an immediate vision of God, in which the intellectual principle alone is active; and he exhorts the worshipper or thinker “to retire within himself,” to possess a soul “converted to itself” or “converted to intellect,” to be oblivious of external conditions, to command the body and all influences, that bear upon the mind through it and from without, to be quiescent;^[70] all which rhetoric means simply that we should banish all finite notions from our mind and think metaphysically in order to rise to real worship and that to do so is to worship.

Reasoning in the same way Porphyry considers the imagination as a veil to our apprehension of an eternal essence;^[71] since the imagination is knowledge that arises from without. Olympiodorus applies the principle to “enthusiasm” or the process of becoming God-like, which is the attainment of the highest good.^[72] Spinoza has the same theory.^[73]

Now what particular intellectual conception is it that brings us to the state of highest blessedness or rather is the state of highest blessedness? It is the conception of the worshipper or thinker that all reality is God; that all creation, including himself, is but the reflection of God, that God and his reflection, like the form and its image in the mirror, are one principle. Recall especially Mrs. Eddy's sentence: “Mortality will cease when man beholds himself God's reflection, even as man sees his reflection in a glass.” The “ceasing of mortality” is of course the coming of life and blessedness and this comes as one beholds himself related to God as the image in the mirror is related to the body or form which it reflects. Hold fast this reasoning and this illustration. Recall that Plotinus uses the same illustration for the relation of creation to the creator. The former is related to the latter as “an image in water, in mirrors, or in shadows”^[74] to the object producing it, he thinks.

Describing the greatest and sublimest act of the soul Plotinus says: “Whoever is a spectator of this (divine) world, becomes at one and the same time both the spectator and the spectacle. For he both surveys himself and other things; and becoming essence, intellect and all-perfect animal (or life) he no longer beholds this intelligible world externally, but now being the same with it, he approaches to the good;”^[75] “Perhaps, however, neither must it be said that he sees, but that he is the thing seen; if it is necessary to call these two things, i. e., the perceiver and the thing perceived. But both are one.”^[76]

Notice simply that in the act of the soul in which one approaches the good and becomes identified with it he is as a spectator beholding so intently the object of his vision and becoming by so entranced that he forgets that he is something different from it. His soul flows as it were into union with it. The seeing agent and the seen object blend into one. This is the highest blessedness said Plotinus sixteen centuries before Mrs. Eddy began to think his thoughts after him.

Proclus reaffirms the doctrine.^[77]

Spinoza also, as we are prepared to believe, repeats it. He says that the true good, or perfect character, consists in “the knowledge of the union existing between the mind and the whole of nature.”^[78] The “whole of nature” is a synonym with him, as we have seen, for God. So he thinks that the greatest good consists in one's knowing that he and God, the image and the form that it reflects, are one. Spinoza served as a good medium for the passage of Neoplantonism to Mrs. Eddy. Now, when we remember that he identifies love with the understanding, this language also becomes intelligible: “The intellectual love of the mind towards God is that very love of God whereby God loves himself”^[79] and “the love of God towards men and the intellectual love of the mind towards God are identical.”^[80]

The doctrine we have been considering is the so-called “deification of man.”^[81] It is that the aim of existence and its highest happiness consist in identification with God and, since man's essence is his understanding, the consciousness of that truth.

Will the reader see how the doctrine of human blessedness which we have been tracing is in logical harmony with the doctrines of the nature of man, of error and evil, of the trinity and many others that we have considered?

It follows logically from such an explanation of human blessedness that it is found in the fading out of personality. We have seen that Mrs. Eddy's god is not a person but a principle. Since man should become like her god then he should lose his individuality and personality. Mrs. Eddy fights against this inference as did the Neoplatonists^[82] but her weapons of defense are weak. She can do nothing but baldly to deny it.^[83] She cannot disprove it. In the first edition of Science and Health, in which she was not so shrewd in hiding this deadly defect of non-personality, both with reference to God and to man, as she was in the late editions of the work, though it is not at all eliminated from these, she says: “Personality will be swallowed up in the boundless Love that shadows forth man; and beauty, immortality, and blessedness, be the glorious proof of existence you recognize. This is not losing man nor robbing God but finding yourself more blessed, as Principle than person, as God than man.”^[84]

With the passing of one's finiteness or otherness than God must pass his personality. It is the wave of the sea sinking back again into the water of the sea and thereby ceasing to be. The individual in order to reach eternal blessedness must, like everything else of value, be pressed through the Christian Science funnel and made to come out as principle; his personality must be squeezed out of him in order to get him to heaven. The heaven of Christian Science is about the same as the Nirvana of Buddhism.

A wave that started from Alexandria in the third century hit the shores of New England in the nineteenth century and by a strange and wicked tempest of wind received a new impetus and momentum. That wave we are confident ought to and will sink back into a calm sea.

We are reminded of Sidney Smith's sarcastic saying that “the ancients have stolen all our best thoughts”; which put in plainer prose is that some moderns steal the thoughts of the ancients, both their best and their worst. If Mary Baker G. Eddy ever had an original idea she failed to give expression to it.

And here, patient reader, I may rest my case. We have perhaps pursued our investigation as far as it is necessary. I have been anxious for you to know the character of Christian Science. If you have followed me through carefully and comprehended the arguments, you now understand it. In doing this you have also obtained some insight into the treasury of worldly wisdom, the worth of which you are now the better prepared to estimate properly. The blessing of knowledge is then with you.

There is one thing that I command thee: that thou tell the truth about this book. And then thou shalt have also the blessing of the truth. I do not pronounce that blessing out he who sees your mind and hears your criticism will pronounce it or withhold it. He is not the dumb deity of the pantheist but the Christian's personal and holy God who knows a lie.

Keep thyself from the idol, or escape quickly from its embrace. “Touch not the unclean thing.” We shall meet before the throne of him before whose face of fire this refuge of learned lies shall be burned up. Peace be unto thee then and now.

1. S. and H. p. 339.
2. S. and H. p. 329. cf. pp. 5, 11.
3. Cf. S. and H. p. 22. cf. No and Yes. p. 42f.
4. Cf. S. and H. p. 46. cf. p. 569.
5. S. and H. p. 339.
6. S. and H. p. 330.
7. 5. 9. 10.
8. 1. 8. 11.
9. 1. 8. 3.
10. Nat. of Evil. 3. (p. 144.)
11. Nat. of Evil 1. (p. 75.)
12. Letter, 32. cf. Letter, 34.
13. Letter, 36.
14. S. and H. p. 273.
15. S. and H. p. 277. cf. pp. 39 and 468.
16. S. and H. p. 208 f.
17. 1. 8. 5. cf. 2. 4. 16.
18. Nat. of Evil, 3 (p. 122.)
19. Cf. No and Yes. p. 24.
20. Cf. No and Yes. pp. 39 and 45.
21. S. and H. p. 555.
22. S. and H. p. 208.
23. Retros. and Intros. p. 99.
24. 3. 2. 3.
25. Nat. of Evil. 4. (p. 154.)
26. Nat. of Evil. 7. (p. 167f.)
27. Pol. Treat. 2. 8. cf. Letter, 32.
28. Cf. Eth. 1, Appendix and Eth. 4. Preface.
29. On Tim. Bk. 2. (Vol. I. p. 314.)
30. Letter, 36.
31. Letter, 34. cf. Letter, 32.
32. In the chapter on Theology it is proved that her god has no sympathy, like which man should become, she argues.
33. Ch. Sc. vs. Pan. p. 15.
34. Cf. S. and H. p. 115.
35. 1. 2. 6.
36. Cf. Aux. 34.
37. Eth. 3. 59. Note.
38. Cf. S. and H. pp. 327f and 514.
39. Cf. Eth. 3. 58; 3. 59. Note; Eth. 3 Definitions of the Emotions.
40. Cf. Eth. 3. 56 and 3. 58.
41. S. and H. p. 586.
42. Other general points of parallelism between Christian Science and Buddhism may be found, cf. St. Louis Christian Advocate of March 27, 1912, article, Pagan Invasion, by Rev. S. H. Wainright, D.D.
43. Cf. S. and H. p. 115.
44. Cf. Eth. 3.
45. S. and H. p. 327f. cf. p. 598f.
46. S. and H. p. 4.
47. S. and H. p. 24. cf. p. 39.
48. Cf. S. and H. p. 46f. and p. 43.
49. S. and H. p. 569. cf. p. 46.
50. On Tim. Bk. 2. (Vol. I. pp. 176 and 178.)
51. Nat. of Evil. 2. (p. 97.)
52. Letter, 34. cf. Eth. 5. 36. Note.
53. Cf. Eth. 5. 33.
54. Kurz. Abh. 2. 22. (p. 98.) Trans. from the German Version.
55. S. and H. p. 6.
56. S. and H. p. 14.
57. S. and H. p. 209. cf. p. 258.
58. S. and H. p. 261. cf. p. 265.
59. S. and H. p. 213.
60. S. and H. p. 467.
61. S. and H. p. 126. cf. Retros. and Intros. p. 99. cf. S. and H. p. 515f.
62. S. and H. p. 336.
63. 6. 7. 36.
64. 1. 4. 3.
65. 6. 9. 3.
66. On Tim. Bk. 3. (Vol. II. p. 9.)
67. Nat. of Evil. 2. (p. 92.)
68. Cf. Windelband's Hist. of Phil. 1. 3. 13. 15 and 2. 2. 18. 6.
69. 1. 2. 3. cf. 2. 9. 6.; 1. 1. 10.; 6. 4. 8.; 6. 4. 16.; 4. 7. 15.
70. Cf. 4. 7. 15.; 5. 1. 10.; 6. 9. 7.
71. Aux. 41.
72. Cf. Platonist. Vol. IV. No. 1 (p. 31.)
73. Cf. Letter, 60; Eth. 5. 39. Note and 1. 15. Note
74. 6. 4. 10.
75. 6. 7. 36. cf. 6. 7. 34.
76. 6. 9. 10. cf. 5. 1. 6.; 5. 3. 5.
77. Cf. Nat. of Evil. 3. (p. 111.) and On Tim. Bk. 5. (Vol. II. p. 431.)
78. Imp. of the Und. p. 6.
79. Eth. 5. 36.
80. Eth. 5. 36. Corol.
81. Cf. Windelband's Hist. of Phil. 2. 2. 18. 6.
82. Cf. Plotinus, 4. 3. 5. and Spinoza in Eth. 5. 22. and 5. 23.
83. Cf. S. and H. p. 259.
84. p. 227.