Editorial October 4, 1969 Issue

Can the Leopard Change His Spots?

Alan A. Aylwin

Can a person change his dispositional traits, or are they as immutably fixed as the spots on a leopard's back? At times they may seem unalterable because the beliefs connected with heredity and one's early environment and training seem to affect one's human personality deeply, shaping his outlook and disposition. Many might feel that the possibilities for change are poor indeed, that through years of habit the dye is set.

If this view of man were factual, his chances of survival would be pretty slim, because negative character and dispositional traits are often the hidden causes of disease and accident. They could be described in the words of the Bible as "the little foxes, that spoil the vines." ^{S. of Sol. 2:15;}

However, thanks to Christian Science, the human personality can be evangelized through an understanding of God as the one intelligent Mind, or Principle, governing man's every thought and act. This is being proved every day in the experience of students of this Science. Many are learning to put off inherited or habitually acquired quirks of character. Self-will, excitability, oversensitiveness, moodiness, impatience—and the physical inharmony they sometimes cause—are yielding to a higher sense of man as the reflected image of perfect divine Mind. This true concept of man, living in the allness of the one Mind, is revealed by the healing Christ that Jesus came to teach and prove. And Paul tells us, "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." ^{II Cor. 5:17;}

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