Chapter 15: 'Science and Health with Key to The Scriptures' by Mary Baker Eddy

Chapter XV - Genesis

551:1
must father these absurdities, for both the material senses

and their reports are unnatural, impossible, and unreal.

The real producer

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Either Mind produces, or it is produced. If Mind is

first, it cannot produce its opposite in quality and quantity,

called matter. If matter is first, it cannot pro-

duce Mind. Like produces like. In natural

history, the bird is not the product of a beast. In spiritual

history, matter is not the progenitor of Mind.

The ascent of species

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One distinguished naturalist argues that mortals spring

from eggs and in races. Mr. Darwin admits this, but he

adds that mankind has ascended through all

the lower grades of existence. Evolution de-

scribes the gradations of human belief, but it does not

acknowledge the method of divine Mind, nor see that ma-

terial methods are impossible in divine Science and that

all Science is of God, not of man.

Transmitted peculiarities

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Naturalists ask: "What can there be, of a material

nature, transmitted through these bodies called eggs, –

themselves composed of the simplest material

elements, – by which all peculiarities of an-

cestry, belonging to either sex, are brought down from

generation to generation?" The question of the natu-

ralist amounts to this: How can matter originate or trans-

mit mind? We answer that it cannot. Darkness and

doubt encompass thought, so long as it bases creation on

materiality. From a material standpoint, "Canst thou

by searching find out God?" All must be Mind, or

else all must be matter. Neither can produce the other.

Mind is immortal; but error declares that the material

seed must decay in order to propagate its species, and

the resulting germ is doomed to the same routine.

Causation not in matter

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The ancient and hypothetical question, Which is first,