In her groundbreaking work, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy includes this passage as part of her answer to the question, “What is man?”—meaning all men and women: “Man is idea, the image, of Love; he is not physique. He is the compound idea of God, including all right ideas; the generic term for all that reflects God’s image and likeness; the conscious identity of being as found in Science, in which man is the reflection of God, or Mind, and therefore is eternal; that which has no separate mind from God; that which has not a single quality underived from Deity; that which possesses no life, intelligence, nor creative power of his own, but reflects spiritually all that belongs to his Maker” (p. 475). The repetition of the word all particularly strikes me. Eddy never describes man as being limited in any respect; he reflects God completely, without limitations of any kind.
I could rely on my understanding of God to support the development of the human skills I needed for right activity.
Each idea of God is an individualized reflection of the one God, divine Principle. Eddy writes, “The one Ego, the one Mind or Spirit called God, is infinite individuality, which supplies all form and comeliness and which reflects reality and divinity in individual spiritual man and things” (Science and Health, p. 281). Man is complete in all respects because God is complete and man is His reflection. When we think of ourselves materially, however, we may identify ourselves by accomplishments, but also by failures or short-comings. There is nothing wrong with developing a human interest or talent for a particular right activity. The problem is in thinking of ourselves as limited, confined only to certain talents.
