In a newspaper interview reproduced on page 344 of her book, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, Mary Baker Eddy is quoted as declaring that the Soul of man is "God preserving individuality and personality to the end." This utterance may be regarded as a statement of absolute truth, having application, as all pure Science has, to humanity. Thus God, through divine Science, constitutes and perpetuates the real individuality and spirituality of man, and so protects the human concept of man from subversion and abnormality, pending the putting off, from the human consciousness, of the old man, the false concept of person, and the revealing of the new man, the true sense of being.
Divine Science, working thus in humanity's behalf, Mrs. Eddy calls Christian Science. And Christian Science stands opposed to all anti-individualistic systems and theories, such as the regimentation of men, the absorption of man in Deity, the merging of the individual with the state, or anything destructive to true individuality. To try to dispossess man of his identity and individuality, his real personality as the expression of the one infinite Person, God, would be to disregard a self-evident fact, namely, self-conscious existence. Since God is, as the Bible teaches, All-in-all, one must count man as in God, in Mind, in conscious existence. The needful distinction between God and man is clear when one understands that man is not God, but ever the manifestation or expression of God. Because of this relationship, man can never lose his identity, individuality, or, if you please, his spiritual personality. As the Psalmist declared, "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever."
Here, as always, a clear differentiation must be made between the real man and the false material sense of man so called. Because mortal mind is a misstatement of real Mind, mortal mind does not exist. Therefore it is an abstraction, a false essence, out of which can emanate no real being, no man. Mortal mind, being the opposite of actual Mind, the opposite of the infinite Person or individuality, God, Spirit, is not itself a person or individual, and cannot create a person, an individual, an identity, a man. Hence the alleged mortal is as unreal, abstract, impersonal as its suppositional maker, mortal mind. Mortal man, in other words, is one with its alleged creator, mortal mind. This fact impersonalizes, renders abstract or without expression, identity, person, all the supposititious offspring of that which is a lie and has no legitimate existence. The impersonalization of error in all its forms, whether claiming to be good or evil, person or thing, accomplishes the scientific destruction of evil.
