Article November 1, 2013

Looking ahead

Frederick Dixon

Originally published in the July 6, 1918 issue of The Christian Science Monitor

Infinite knowledge is infinite protection. It describes the environment of generic man, or the full reflection of divine Mind, an environment from which all evil is entirely excluded, since God, as infinite good, cannot reflect evil. Now generic man is necessarily the sum of all divine ideas, whether greater or smaller, and so in himself includes the universe, for, as Mrs. Eddy writes, on page 32 of “Unity of Good,” “Spirit is the only creator, and man, including the universe, is His spiritual concept.” Generic man, then, is a synonym for the spiritual universe, which universe itself includes man when man is understood as an individual man, or one of those greater ideas which make up in their entirety the compound idea known as generic man. So that, since Mind must control all its ideas, which cannot exist without it, Mrs. Eddy writes, on page 468 of Science and Health, “The spiritual universe, including individual man, is a compound idea, reflecting the divine substance of Spirit.”

This very fact of the existence of God, or divine Mind, and His idea, the universe or generic man, predicates the supposititious existence of a counterfeit known as the devil, or mortal mind, and his idea, the material universe. This universe, according to the teaching of philosophic idealism, is the mortal or human mind, for, according to this idealism, all material phenomena are the subjective condition, or ideas, of this mind. Thus the generic man of philosophic idealism is nothing but the universe of supposititious ideas, made up of all the men, women, and children comprised in the phrase mankind.

Send a comment to the editors