IT is often said that there are two kinds of people in the world, the realists and the idealists. The realist, according to this theory, is concerned with the material universe and man, with what he sees before him and with what he considers from the basis of the physical senses to be facts. The idealist looks beyond the material and deals with ideas, with abstract perfection.
Christian Science is both realistic and idealistic in that it is concerned with facts, but these facts are spiritual; it deals with ideas and acknowledges only that which is perfect as real. In other words, God and His perfect spiritual universe and man are the basis of its reasoning and conclusions. Furthermore, it proves that the absolute acceptance of good as the only real, and of the consequent nothingness of everything unlike Him, is a self-enforcing law which brings about the ideal in human experience.
Mary Baker Eddy indicates the basis of making the ideal real for all of us in this statement from "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" (p. 272): "The real man was, is, and ever shall be the divine ideal, that is, God's image and likeness; and Christian Science reveals the divine Principle, the example, the rule, and the demonstration of this idealism."
