The opposing nature of the spiritual and material views of man is perhaps nowhere more striking than in their different perspectives on intelligence. Basing its spiritual perspective in the Bible, Christian Science explains that intelligence comes from God, the one infinite, omnipotent, divine Mind of the universe. The book of Job, for example, says of God, "He is in one mind, and who can turn him? and what his soul desireth, even that he doeth" (23:13).

Since God is also Spirit, intelligence must be wholly spiritual, not dependent on matter for its origin, manifestation, enhancement, or perpetuation. Man, the eternal likeness or outcome of God, divine Mind, reflects this intelligence continuously, boundlessly, eternally.

From a strictly material perspective, on the other hand, popular and scientific thinking about intelligence has for centuries regarded the brain as the seat of all human and animal intelligence. In the past several decades, molecular biologists have endeavored to find a genetic basis for at least some aspects of intelligence in the functions of the brain. TIME magazine recently reported on research at Princeton University which found that the memory and learning ability of a strain of mice was enhanced by manipulating the DNA in the mice's brains ("Smart Genes?" Sept. 13, 1999). The significance and implications of the Princeton results are, to be sure, controversial and do not reflect a consensus of those who think of intelligence in physiological and material terms. More important, however, this study challenges spiritual thinkers to understand more deeply and demonstrate more convincingly that intelligence has in reality a spiritual basis.

What exactly, then, does the brain have to do with intelligence, and what are neurobiologists seeing when they probe deeply into the workings of the brain? In reality, the brain has nothing to do with intelligence. Its internal processes are not thought and memory, nor is it the governor of bodily functions. What appears physically as a brain and its functions is a manifestation of mortal mind, or what St. Paul called the "carnal mind" (see Rom. 8:7). Finite by nature, this false mentality is the suppositional opposite of the divine Mind, God. "Mortal mind and body are one," explains Mary Baker Eddy in Science and Health. "Neither exists without the other, and both must be destroyed by immortal Mind. Matter, or body, is but a false concept of mortal mind" (p. 177).

The brain is the central manifestation of mortal mind's belief of intelligence in matter, just as the eye represents mortal mind's belief of vision in matter. The correlation that neurobiologists find between conditions and events in the brain and some bodily function or dysfunction is not actually indicative of a cause-effect relationship, because both are the effects of mortal mind. No matter whether researchers are manipulating a single gene in the brain, as they were with the Princeton mice, or endeavoring to classify the functions of the brain's major divisions, what they see is not objective reality. It is not even the repository, residence, or source of mortal mind. What they see is simply the manifestation of what mortal mind believes about itself.

Which perspective, then, is the real basis for intelligence, the spiritual or the genetic and material? Mrs. Eddy responds definitively in Miscellaneous Writings: "The prophets, Jesus, and the apostles, demonstrated a divine intelligence that subordinates so-called material laws; and disease, death, winds, and waves, obey this intelligence" (p. 23). What further evidence do we need that intelligence is spiritual than these luminaries' stunning record of powerful good works? What's needed now is to perpetuate their legacy through present-day proofs of divine intelligence.

Ronald S. Douglass
Poughkeepsie, New York