Editorial April 3, 1978 Issue

The new perception of reality

Geoffrey J. Barratt

A gallery with a retrospective exhibition of work by an artist who has been very influential for twenty years.... We'd read about the show, and walked in. The paintings turned upside down many traditional notions of art. Yes, very modern, I thought. Why "modern"?

From my own question I realized how much "modern" suggests challenge to old values and world views. Many new perceptions have emerged in the past century. They have stimulated and colored politics, the arts, religion, natural sciences, and more.

But of all the flowering new perceptions, the most significant is Mary Baker Eddy's, as expressed in Christian Science. Here's a straight-to-the-point instance from one of her shorter writings: "The scientific man and his Maker are here; and you would be none other than this man, if you would subordinate the fleshly perceptions to the spiritual sense and source of being."^{Unity of Good, p. 46;}