The Greater Legacy


“We instinctively revere the great artist, painter or musician and society as a whole looks upon them as not quite ordinary beings.

“And they are not. They are a cut above man.... He who can truly communicate to others is a higher being who builds new worlds.”

L. Ron Hubbard


J
ust as it is impossible to consider L. Ron Hubbard the man without considering L. Ron Hubbard the artist, so, too, one cannot hope to appreciate his artistic contribution without some appreciation of his philosophic writings on the subject.

Although his earliest notes on the matter date from 1943, his initial treatment of the arts in a philosophic sense may be found in his writings from 1951. In brief, he theorized that somewhere above workaday thought, there existed what he termed an aesthetic mind, and it was that level of mental activity which “deals with the nebulous field of art and creation.” In either case, he declared, “Until somebody can define what art is, the world is not likely to become more conscious of it.” As a precedent, he then cited the work of Francis Bacon, who is generally credited as the first to develop the concept of codification, i.e., that any subject may be systematically arranged according to its rules. And it was in that tradition he then proceeded to address art as a whole.