Ordinarily man is thought of as partly temporal in his make-up, and partly permanent; the permanent part is spoken of as soul, the temporary as body. The prevailing opinion is that soul, at the moment of dissolution, in some unaccountable way escapes to live on, while the abandoned body is left to disintegration. The common belief is poetically expressed in the familiar lines from Ecclesiastes:
Then shall the dust return to the earth
as it was:
And the spirit shall return unto God
who gave it.
The fact is that Soul or Spirit is all there is to man. No material or mortal dross enters into his composition. For, remarks Mary Baker Eddy: "Soul is the substance, Life, and intelligence of man, which is individualized, but not in matter. Soul can never reflect anything inferior to Spirit. Man is the expression of Soul" (Science and Health, p. 477).
