Article November 29, 1913 Issue

True to Type

GEORGE H. MOORE

There is no one element of human life that is more vital to continued good health than man's right to his own individuality, his own self-expression and control. This basic fact underlies every revolt of mankind against his oppressors, for it is a fundamental test of manhood. Christian Science not only conserves this right, "but confers upon man enlarged individuality, a wider sphere of thought and action, a more expansive love, a higher and more permanent peace" (Science and Health. p. 265).

A more specious denial of the validity of Christian Science teachings could hardly have been framed than that the emphasis of the allness of God means the belittling of man; and no accusation could be less becoming on the part of the advocates of the present social régime, tending so decidedly as it does to hamper the individual with the fears and traditions of the many. This very ironing-out process, by means of which individual conception and initiative are so held in check that both our thinking and our productive processes tend to conform to a fixed mechanical order, constitutes one of the most serious charges against so-called modern civilizaiton. Any machine-made product which departs from its prescribed model has no place provided for it but the scrap-heap; and a machine-made civilization has no more mercy and provides no better place for wanderers from its mechanically dogmatic and static notions. Variations from its standards are looked upon as anomalous discards, who fight out their cause in life, who maintain their place, if at all, against and in spite of the frowns of entrenched, pattern-made virtue. Mankind almost always suspects a genius and abuses a reformer, until it learns, perchance, to use them to the increase of its own comfort.

The monotonous level of the machine process has appeared strongly barricaded in our schools. The same leveling up or leveling down has been going on in the churches, in society, and in government. Even popular opinion and sentiment have come under this false law, and both are today manufactured at will by a designing press. Our political campaigns are cases in point. More than one of our national or racial, class or religious likes and dislikes is press-made or pulpit-made. Many an honest man would have good reason to blush for holding some cherished opinions and theories if they could only be traced to their original source.

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