In answer to the question, "What are body and Soul?" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 477) Mary Baker Eddy writes in part: "Identity is the reflection of Spirit, the reflection in multifarious forms of the living Principle, Love. Soul is the substance, Life, and intelligence of man, which is individualized, but not in matter." She also says in the paragraph following, "Man is the expression of Soul." Because man is the image and likeness of God, he is the evidence of Spirit, which is the antipode of matter. Therefore man's identity is spiritual; it is separate and apart from the mesmeric belief of mortality or a material body and is inseparable from Spirit.
Scholastic theology and false education teach that man has his origin in a material body, that he emerges into existence as an infant, and that he later acknowledges an anthropomorphic God. So-called mortal mind fosters beliefs of birth, growth, maturity, inactivity, old age, and death. But as one relinquishes his material concept of birth and recognizes man's divine origin, he becomes more conscious of his spiritual, incorporeal identity.
That which appears to material sense as a mortal body is but a false belief or misapprehension of God's idea. Christian Science reveals that mortal mind and material body are one. Since mortal mind is the counterfeit of the divine Mind, it is ignorant of divine reality. As we give up the ignorant, false belief of a mortal mind for the truth that God is the only Mind, we exchange the false belief of a mortal body for spiritual identity, or idea. This exchange results in improved bodily conditions.
