Chapter 10: 'Science and Health with Key to The Scriptures' by Mary Baker Eddy

Chapter X - Science Of Being

Like evolving like

277:1
ever non-intelligent and therefore cannot spring from

intelligence. To all that is unlike unerring and eternal

Mind, this Mind saith, "Thou shalt surely die;" and else-

where the Scripture says that dust returns to dust. The

non-intelligent relapses into its own unreality. Matter

never produces mind. The immortal never produces the

mortal. Good cannot result in evil. As God Himself is

good and is Spirit, goodness and spirituality must be im-

mortal. Their opposites, evil and matter, are mortal

error, and error has no creator. If goodness and spirit-

uality are real, evil and materiality are unreal and can-

not be the outcome of an infinite God, good.

277:13
Natural history presents vegetables and animals as

preserving their original species, – like reproducing like.

A mineral is not produced by a vegetable nor the man

by the brute. In reproduction, the order of genus and

species is preserved throughout the entire round of nature.

This points to the spiritual truth and Science of being.

Error relies upon a reversal of this order, asserts that

Spirit produces matter and matter produces all the ills

of flesh, and therefore that good is the origin of evil.

These suppositions contradict even the order of material

so-called science.

Material error

277:24
The realm of the real is Spirit. The unlikeness of Spirit

is matter, and the opposite of the real is not divine, – it is

a human concept. Matter is an error of state-

ment. This error in the premise leads to errors

in the conclusion in every statement into which it enters.

Nothing we can say or believe regarding matter is immor-

tal, for matter is temporal and is therefore a mortal phe-

nomenon, a human concept, sometimes beautiful, always

erroneous.