Article June 11, 1910 Issue

THE CONSTRUCTIVE MIND

DR. EDMUND F. BURTON

There will be no objection upon the part of any exponent of modern ethics to the proposition that optimism is better than pessimism, that it is a power for good and leads to improved conditions; and all shades of Christian thought today will endorse and sustain the desirability of up-looking instead of down-looking. Such thinking is, however, no more than a determination to look upon the bright side of things while acknowledging that there is a dark side; an attempt, to use an old and homely expression, to lift oneself by one's own bootstraps. It is a dependence upon the power of the human will over the human mind and body, and when the human will sinks down in helplessness before the acknowledged power of matter and physical laws, this dark side is sure to appear and force itself upon the experience of every one.

Christian Science is, above all things, optimistic in its teaching and tendency, but it puts a permanent and unshakable foundation under such teaching by revealing the truth that there is no reality but good; that there is no dark side, and that in the new heaven and new earth there is no night. In Science and Health (p. 475), we read that man "reflects spiritually all that belongs to his Maker." We look upon creative power as one of the highest attributes of God, and although we are able to comprehend but partially that which in spiritual man is the manifestation of this quality of his Maker, still today as never before is it patent to the eyes of men.

In man as we know him it appears as the constructive mentality. In the commercial world today he who is endowed to the highest degree with such constructive powers of mind is most highly esteemed, and is showered with the best that men can give. The day of the apotheosis of the destroying conqueror is past. The day of the builder is here, and although there have never been produced by the hands of man such powerful engines of destruction as now, yet their real object is that peace may be preserved and that destruction may cease. It is therefore interesting and profitable to understand the particular cast of mind which possesses this constructive ability. More than anything else it seems to be the power to see a goal, and between the present standpoint and such goal nothing but a path thereto; the ability to understand as opportunities those things which to minds of less clarity and courage appear as obstacles; the inability to see failure or evil. A man so endowed looks across a continent and sees a path for a railroad, and to him the forests, streams, valleys, and mountains are but aids to his enterprise, not barriers in his way.

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