Article May 25, 1981 Issue

Beholding and naming good

JOY DELL

The fawn in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass teaches a great lesson. When he and Alice were in the wood where things had no names, they were friends and walked together. As soon as they came out of the wood, however, the creature realized that he was a fawn and that his companion was Alice, a human child. Soon he bounded away in fright.

What had happened? Carroll implies that naming things can give them an aspect that they didn't have before, and sometimes that aspect is frightening. This may indicate the need for alertness when we name things. We can reinforce any positive experience by identifying the good in it as coming from God. But identifying negative experiences as real does not help us. This false reasoning works against us.

In the Adam and Eve allegory, Adam is given the questionable luxury of naming, or identifying, objects and details of the Adam-dream. Commenting on this, Mrs. Eddy writes, "Beholding the creations of his own dream and calling them real and God-given, Adam—alias error—gives them names." Science and Health, p. 528.

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