True creation is spiritual reflection. In "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 23) Mrs. Eddy says: "Few there are who comprehend what Christian Science means by the word reflection. God is seen only in that which reflects good, Life, Truth, Love—yea, which manifests all His attributes and power, even as the human likeness thrown upon the mirror repeats precisely the looks and actions of the object in front of it." In optics, for purposes of distinction, use is made of the terms actual image and virtual image. The former is that which is separated from and capable of existing apart from its source, as the photographic likeness; the latter, on the other hand, is that which cannot be separated from nor have any existence apart from its original, as the reflection in a mirror. The first definition involves matter per se, for it has the element of separation, which is never found in Mind, and indicates reproduction by self-division.
Such belief is Christianly untenable, for it reaches backward into paganism and is a stumblingblock in the way of human progress, the acceptance of which would render each human body an entity separated from the source of man's being. This line of generation, traced back far enough, fetches up at the belief in an original man, Adam. At this point the imagination hesitates, then quickly concludes that God made Adam alone out of the dust of the ground. This ingeniously simple method of reasoning, when held to account for the I am, readily assigns to God the humble office of filling each mortal body with the breath of life, much after the manner of the native African doctor, who brings a fresh soul to the sick person, in a covered basket for fear it may escape, and blows it into the patient's mouth. Quite satisfied with this flight of imagery, the materialist sits back, folds his hands, and smiles complacently at his own cleverness.
The spiritual thinker must pass on to the real image, for he cannot help seeing the treacherous rapids toward which the materialist is drifting. The rapids are the responsibility of a separate selfhood, and the hidden rocks are his own beliefs of unyielding material limitations. The thinker will choose the quiet waters which reflect the infinite One. The Japanese have an old belief that a woman's mirror contains her soul, and that if she is separated from it, something disastrous will happen to her. The Occidental may smile indulgently at this absurdity, quite overlooking the fact that he may be harboring precisely the same sort of superstition in a slightly different form. What is the intrinsic difference between believing that a soul inhabits the mirror, a mere appurtenance of its owner, and that a soul is incased in the material body of its possessor? To call one belief heathen and the other Christian is a purely arbitrary distinction, which has to do with the location rather than the nature of the person's soul. The basic belief is the same, namely, that soul dwells in matter. In the first instance the soul is, to a degree at least, independent of the human form, and the idolatry is the more conspicuous for its objective quality; while in the second case the material body is the temple in which the soul is supposed to exist. Does not the Elohistic version of the creation of man declare him to be made in the image and likeness of God, who, Jesus tells us, is Spirit? Who or what can divide Spirit?
