NATURALNESS is a much abused and misused word, yet taken at its best and in its highest meaning it is something greatly to be desired, and is within the reach of every human being. What then is naturalness? The dictionary tells us that it is "freedom from affectation, artificiality, or exaggeration," but it is much more than this. To be natural, in its best sense, is to be true, honest, spontaneous, free in thought, word, and deed. True to what? To the best one knows; and not to be true to the best one knows is failure, perhaps the only failure there is. People sometimes ask, when admonished to be true, "How can one be true?" and the answer might well be, "Be natural." It works both ways,—to be natural is to be true; to be true is to be natural,—for Truth is the only wholly real and therefore natural thing there is.
In Science and Health (p. 591) the miracle is defined as that which is "divinely natural," and it is only to the human sense that spiritual manifestations, real because natural, seem miraculous. Visible things, temporary and artificial, are but hints or intimations of glories to be revealed to each individual consciousness as it awakens, here and now, to a realization of the natural things of that life which is eternal, ever present, and all powerful.
Shakespeare's words as spoken by Polonius,—
