Editorial December 31, 1910 Issue

SYMBOL AND SIGNIFICANCE

John B. Willis

A student once asked an artist how he might cultivate the capacity to perceive and enjoy genuine fine-art qualities and products, and instantly the reply came, "Get something that is really good, put it in your room, and look at it hard and often." Though somewhat surprised by this answer, the student thought upon it, and chancing soon after to see a bit of bronze by one of the world's famous sculptors, he bought it. It was only a little bunny, poised in his inimitable way for a quick look about him, but so masterfully modeled as to have all the charming alertness and naiveté of the rabbit's own pose, and for many years it has been looked at with unwaning interest and delight. In these years, moreover, the artist's advice has prompted the endeavor not only to give time and attention to the study of the best things, but to try to see all things at their best, to discover the highest values that are manifest in, or that may be suggested by every object and experience.

It is a splendid thing to be able to appreciate and so enjoy to the full those masterpieces with which genius is ever enriching the inheritance of mankind, but it is manifest that the finding of the good, the beautiful, and the true, which may be resident in or suggested by our common possessions and experiences, is of far greater significance to the many. Indeed this might be named the art of arts, since it has immediately to do with the happiness, the enrichment, and the consequent usefulness of one and all. To center our thought upon the best possible interpretation of every thing, to discover its heart of worth, can but conduce to the education of one's instinct for the ideal, for gold, and the only chance for slip in the broader following of the artist's advice is in the matter of determining what things are "really good" and hence merit our study. If one knew what constitutes genuine worth, wherever found in that complexity of good and evil which makes up the world of human sense, if he had the Lydian touchstone, if he always perceived the true value, he could then exercise that higher sense which leads ultimately to the complete identification of consciousness with its noblest object of desire.

All thoughtful people know that the telltalefulness of any thing is practically unlimited if its inquisitor be sufficiently perceptive and insistent; hence one's education may be said to be measured by the meaning to him of what is generally regarded as commonplace. The trouble is, and ever has been, that people—even many of the noble-minded—are uncertain and confused as to what is true and good; they have had no adequate and available criterion of worth, and not the least among the blessings conferred by the teaching of Christian Science is the fact that it at once lifts up for its every student an authoritative standard of judgment.

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