Article August 6, 2001 Issue

THE MOST WONDERFUL COMPLIMENT

Calvin DeLano

As a teacher of chemistry in Nebraska and Missouri high schools, and as a chemistry laboratory technician at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, I have always enjoyed demonstrating to my students the beauty inherent in chemical systems—beauty not only in the colors and forms they often take, but also in the intellectual elegance they portray. Usually at the end of a term of study, I put together a "show" of many such beautiful reacting systems. The students and their professors seem to get as much enjoyment from this as I do.

At the close of each of these shows, I ask a question Mary Baker Eddy asked the printer of her works, William Dana Orcutt, "Have you never realized that if a man has beauty in himself, he can put beauty into anything?" (Mary Baker Eddy and Her Books, p. p.45). And then I say to the students, Did you see anything you thought was beautiful?" Their response is usually a somewhat reserved "Yes" because they think it is a silly question or think perhaps that I'm fishing for compliments. I continue with the ploy. "Where is the beauty?"

"It must be in you," is the usually hesitant response.

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