The Monitor's founder, Mary Baker Eddy, followed developments in early aviation with interest. We asked aviation history writer Rosalie Dunbar to comment.
Humankind's desire to fly like the birds antedates by centuries the Wright brothers' first flight on that early December morning in 1903. But while the world's best-known aviation pioneers managed to stay aloft for only 12 seconds during that 120-foot journey, human beings would thereafter prove to be irreversibly aloft. Interested in finding out more about early aviation? Our editors found the www.wright-brothers.org Web site good for basic information, and then some .
Mary Baker Eddy is said to have had a keen interest in the advancements being made in aviation. When the members of her household attended an aviation meet at Squantum, Massachusetts, in September 1910, she quizzed them carefully about their observations. But, characteristically, she tended to describe humanity's desire to rise above the ground in spiritual terms. In a brief article entitled "Soaring," she remarked: "To fly materially is animal, to fly spiritually is divine. . . . The elevation desirable worth obtaining or possible to obtain in Science is spiritual ascent, thought soaring above matter. . . . Oh when will the age plant its discoveries on spiritual cause & effect, on that which is not only capable of going up but is ascending, physically, mentally and spiritually." . Robert Peel, Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Authority (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1977), pp. 510-511 .
