Though broad-mindedness has ever been considered an admirable quality, human conceptions of broad-mindedness have continued at the best to be limited and indefinable. Humanity in its readiness to be content with any pleasing prospect has frequently ignored the fact that the breadth and real import of the view increased proportionately with the height of the vantage-point. Mrs. Eddy tells us in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 561) that "the Revelator beheld the spiritual idea from the mount of vision." Unwillingness to make the necessary individual effort of climbing to this mount must always narrow one's perception of the spiritual idea.
Perception and appreciation of the spiritual, of course, and not a superficial familiarity with the countless inventions, philosophical or otherwise, of the human brain, constitute that true breadth of vision which alone is satisfying and healing. The attempt to find good in everything, commendable though it may seem at first thought, is shown by careful analysis to be futile pantheism. Good is never really in things. God, good, is Spirit, and Spirit is not in matter.
What good can there be, for instance, in such a thing as a counterfeit coin? A thorough study of all the counterfeit coins in existence would not even enable one to detect a counterfeit coin unerringly in case an entirely new variety should appear. The mixture of base metal with good metal, due to a base human motive, completely prevents a piece of money from having any value as coin, for the value or substantiality of good coin is not in the thing itself but in the confidence which humanity generally has in the creator of the coin. Certainly, therefore, a study of and an interest in counterfeits is not an indication of broad-mindedness. He who in his eagerness for the healing wholeness of Truth is determined to acquaint himself only with what is genuine instead of with what is spurious, no matter how attractive the latter may seem, is finding out what real breadth is.
