Article May 7, 1910 Issue

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AND THE "ARTISTIC TEMPERAMENT."

MARY C. FRANCIS.

Dissatisfaction with human life and conditions often means intense longing for the ideal. The dissatisfaction and the longing are common in a greater or less degree to the entire human race, but when manifested to a marked extent it is commonly known as "temperament;" and if the unhappy possessor happens to be one of the world's producers, a musician, a writer, a sculptor, or a painter, it is still further alluded to as the "artistic temperament." Under this treacherous disguise depths of anguish have been hidden, known only to those who have suffered, for pride always goes hand in hand with mental pain.

In the misdirected effort of the human mind to change the environment or the conditions on the material plane, it forever breaks its long, moaning waves on the sands of time, striving to pass the bounds of the infinite. Yet all the unhappy ones are only looking for peace. The most excitable persons secretly yearn for poise. The victim of a highstrung nature is always longing to be "understood." The lonely eat their hearts out for lack of sympathy and companionship. The loveless and unloved seem to perish for lack of love, and starved wanderers needlessly sob themselves to sleep in the cold dawn.

Moods, temper, hysteria, nervousness, headaches, sleeplessness,—these are merely a few of the torturing brood of evils that swarm in the trail of the artistic temperament, until it has come to be accepted as a matter of course that any one with productive ability in the realm of art, music, or literature must necessarily be subject to them—and to still worse things. But for over forty years Christian Science has steadily drawn recruits from the ranks of the temperamental, and within the past few years the large number of artists, musicians, actors, authors, newspaper people, and others who deal with the plastic thought of the world, who have turned to this teaching, has attracted much attention; and the question is often asked, Why is it?

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