The sinner created neither himself nor sin, but sin created the sinner; that is, error made its man mortal, and this mortal was the image and likeness of evil, not of good. Therefore the lie was, and _is_, collective as well as individual. It was in no way contingent on Adam's thought, but supposititiously self-created. In the words of our Master, it, the "devil" (_alias_ evil), "was a liar, and the father of it." This mortal material concept was never a creator, although as a serpent it claimed to originate in the name of "the Lord," or good,--original evil; second, in the name of human concept, it claimed to beget the offspring of evil, _alias_ an evil offspring. However, the human concept never was, neither indeed can be, the father of man. Even the spiritual idea, or ideal man, is not a parent, though he reflects the infinity of good. The great difference between these opposites is, that the human material concept is _unreal_, and the divine concept or idea is spiritually real. One is false, while the other is true. One is temporal, but the other is eternal. Our Master instructed his students to "call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven." (Matt. xxiii. 9.) Science and Health, the textbook of Christian Science, treats of the human concept, and the transference of thought, as follows:-- "How can matter originate or transmit mind? We answer that it cannot. Darkness and doubt encompass thought, so long as it bases creation on materiality" (p. 551). "In reality there is no _mortal_ mind, and consequently no transference of mortal thought and will-power. Life and being are of God. In Christian Science, man can do no harm, for scientific thoughts are true thoughts, passing from God to man" (pp. 103, 104). "Man is the offspring of Spirit. The beautiful, good, and pure constitute his ancestry. His origin is not, like that of mortals, in brute instinct, nor does he pass through material conditions prior to reaching intelligence. Spirit is his primitive and ultimate source of being; God is his Father, and Life is the law of his being" (p. 63). "The parent of all human discord was the Adam-dream, the deep sleep, in which originated the delusion that life and intelligence proceeded from and passed into matter. This pantheistic error, or so-called _serpent_, insists still upon the opposite of Truth, saying, 'Ye shall be as gods;' that is, I will make error as real and eternal as Truth.... 'I will put spirit into what I call matter, and matter shall seem to have life as much as God, Spirit, who _is_ the only Life.' This error has proved itself to be error. Its life is found to be not Life, but only a transient, false sense of an existence which ends in death" (pp. 306, 307).