Editorial June 22, 1946 Issue

Wise Crows

Paul Stark Seeley

There was a time, and not so many years ago, when members of the crow family could be diverted from newly planted cornfields and gardens by crossed sticks stuck in the ground, and covered with a worn-out shirt or coat, topped with an old hat. The sleeves would flap in the breeze, and the impression was created that here was a sentinel guarding the planted acreage against hungry black-feathered marauders.

Now, a press dispatch tells us that the crow is no longer afraid of scarecrows; that even a young and inexperienced crow soon discovers there is no personality in the crossed sticks, battered hat, and flapping sleeves. Just when and how this capacity of the crow to subtract the scare from the scarecrow developed, we are not told. The important point is that what for a long period was an effective means of deceiving the crow is said no longer to deceive him. According to the writer of the press dispatch, the crow has outgrown the deception.

For an unknown period, mortals have believed the physical body to be man, even as the crows believed the scarecrow to be a person, have regarded the body sometimes with adoration, but always with a sense of latent fear that at some time it would be the medium for affliction and death. A growing understanding of man as not material but spiritual, as taught by Christ Jesus and Christian Science, is lessening this fear of the body, and showing the way to accomplish its subjugation.

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