Chapter 1

EDITORIALS from the HEARST NEWSPAPERS {Arthur Brisbane}

CONTENTS Why Are All Men Gamblers? No Man Understands Iron We Long for Immortal Imperfection--We Can't Have It. Three Water-Drops Converse Did We Once Live on the Moon? William Henry Channing's Symphony The Existence of God--Parable of the Blind Kittens Have the Animals Souls? Jesus' Attitude Toward Children Study of the Character of God The Fascinating Problem of Immortality Discontent the Motive Power of Progress The Automobile Will Make Us More Human Let Us Be Thankful The Harm That Is Done by Our Friends Shall We Tame and Chain the Invisible Microbe As We Now Chain Niagara? The Elephant That Will Not Move Has Better Excuses Than We Have for Folly Displayed Let Us Be Thankful What Will 999 Years Mean to the Human Race? The Azores--A Small Lost World in a Universe of Water No Napoleonic Chess Player on an Air Cushion A Girl's Face in the Gaslight The "Criminal" Class The Wonderful Magnet Who Is Independent? Nobody When We Begin Using Land Under the Oceans Where Your Body Came From How Marriage Began Man's Willingness to Work The Human Brain Beats the Coal Mines How the Other Planets Will Talk to Us Shall We Do Without Sleep Some Day? The Three Best Things in the World The Value of Solitude There Should Be a Monument to Time A Mother's Work and Her Hopes Your Work Is Your Brain's Gymnasium The Steeple, Moving Like the Hand of a Clock Cultivate Thought-Teach Your Brain to Work Early The Wind Does Not Rule Your Destiny One of the Many Corpses in the Johnstown Mine "Limiting the Amount of a Day's Work" Catching a Red-Hot Bolt The Trusts and the Union--How Do They Differ? France Has Learned Her Lesson Union Men as Slave Owners Again the Limited Day's Work To the Merchants What About the Chinese, Kind Sir? 150 against 150,000--We Favor the 150,000 To-day's World-Struggle White-Rabbit Millionaires and Other Things No Happiness Save in Mental and Physical Activity The Owner of a Golden Mountain The Human Weeds in Prison Crime Is Dying Out The Value of Poverty to the World 600 Teachers Now, 600,000 Good Americans in the Future Education--The First Duty of Government Poverty Is the Father of Vice, Crime and Failure The Importance of Education Proved in Lincoln's Case Knowledge Is Growth A Whiskey Bottle Those Who Laugh at a Drunken Man Law Cannot Stop Drunkenness--Education Can The Drunkard's Side of It Drink a Slow Poison To Those Who Drink Hard--You Have Slipped the Belt Try Whiskey on Your Friend's Eyeball What Are the Ten Best Books? The Marvelous Balance of the Universe--A Lesson in the Texas Flood The Earth Is Only a Front Yard Last Week's Baby Will Surely Talk Some Day The Good That Is Done by the Trusts Trusts and the Senate The Promising Toad's Head Trusts Will Drive Labor Unions Into Politics The Trusts Are National School Teachers A Woman to Be Pitied When Will Woman's Mental Life Begin? The Cow That Kicks Her Weaned Calf Is All Heart Respectable Women Who Listen to "Faust" Why Women Should Vote Astronomy- Woman's Future Work Woman's Vanity Is Useful To Editorial Writers--Adopt Ruskin's Main Idea Imagination Without Dreaming the Secret of Material Success The One Who Needs No Statue The Vast Importance of Sleep Woman Sustains, Guides and Controls the World The Story of the Complaining Diamond Don't Be in a Hurry, Young Gentlemen hen the Baby Changed Into a Fourteen-year-old The Eye That Weighs a Ton What Animal Controls Your Spirit? From Mammoths to Mosquitoes--From Murder to Hypocrisy The Monkey and the Snake Fight Too Little and Too Much Do You Feel Discouraged? Two Kinds of Discontent What the Bartender Sees What Should Be a Man's Object in Life? Cruel Frightening of Children It Is Natural for Children to Be Cruel Two Thin Little Babies Are Left A Baby Can Educate a Man

The articles in this book were published originally in the editorial columns of the various Hearst newspapers throughout the country.

These articles may have some interest for the student of modern happenings, because of the fact that the newspapers publishing them have an aggregate daily circulation of two millions of copies, and are read each day by no fewer than five millions of men and women. Such wide circulation of identical opinions on current events, in different parts of the country, is a new feature of our national life. The character of such writings, and their probable influence upon the public mind, whatever their lack of intrinsic merit, may be of sufficient importance to justify the publication of this collection of ephemeral writings.

WHY ARE ALL MEN GAMBLERS?

The annual report of the gambling house at Monte Carlo shows a profit of about $5,000,000.

A large collection of human beings travel from all parts of the world to Monte Carlo for the sake of giving $5,000,000 to the gambling concern there.

Wherever you look on earth to-day or in the past you find human beings gambling, and you will find the gambling instinct stronger than any other--stronger than the love of drink, infinitely stronger than the love of normal, honest gain.

* * *

Christopher Columbus's sailors gambled on the way over, and the Indians on this side were gambling while waiting to be discovered.

In an office overlooking Trinity graveyard, in New York City, an old man, past eighty, with a fortune of at least $50,000,000, gambles every day with all the excitement of youth. The fluctuations in his game bring to his sallow cheeks the color that no other human emotion could bring there.

On his way home this old man passes crowds of children in the streets and looks down, concerned and sorrowful, to find that they, too, are gambling.

They are matching pennies or shaking dice.

* * *

Clergymen are startled and amazed to find that women are gambling heavily.

They have gambled heavily ever since civilization has progressed far enough to give them large sums to gamble with.

Marie Antoinette staked thousands of louis at a time at Versailles.

She was so wrapped up in gambling she could not see that her neck was in danger.

When the lava came down from Vesuvius it buried Pompeiians who were gambling.

The men who dig up the old monuments in Africa find gambling instruments crumbling away side by side with appliances for taking human life.

* * *

Nowhere in the lower forms of animal life, so far as we know, is there the slightest indication of the gambling instinct.

The monkey, the elephant, love whiskey, and easily become drunkards.

The passion for alcohol seems innate in animal life; even the wise ant can be readily induced to disgrace himself if alcohol is put near him.

For all the human weaknesses and mainsprings--ambition, affection, vanity, drunkenness, ferocity, greediness, cunning--we can find beginnings among the lower animals.

But man appears to have evolved from within himself the gambling instinct for his own especial damnation.

Where did the instinct come from? Why was it planted in us?

Like every other instinct with which intelligent nature endows us, it must have its good purpose, and it must not be judged merely in the corrupted form in which we study it at Monte Carlo or in Wall Street.

Perhaps the spirit of gambling is really only an atrophied, perverted form of the spirit of adventure.

Columbus staked his life and gambled, when he started across the water.

The leaders of the American Revolution expressly staked their lives, their fortunes and their "sacred honor" in signing the Declaration of Independence. They were noble gamblers, working for the welfare of their fellows.

Perhaps gambling is only a perverted form of intelligent ambition--we are all natural gamblers because we have within us the quality which makes us willing to risk our own comfort, security and present happiness for a result that seems better worth while.

The universality of the gambling instinct in human beings is certainly worthy of our study.

NO MAN UNDERSTANDS IRON HOW CAN WE HOPE TO UNDERSTAND GOD?

Is there laughter in heaven--or can nothing move the eternal heavenly calm?

If mirth exists among the perpetually blissful, how must the angels laugh when in idle moments they listen to our speculations concerning the Divinity? They peer down at us as we look at ants dragging home a fragment of dead caterpillar. They hear us say things like this:

If God exists, why does He not reveal himself to ME?

How could God exist before He created the world? Force cannot exist or demonstrate its existence without matter. How could a creator exist except with creation around him?

Where did He live before He made heaven?

If He is all-powerful, could He in five seconds make a six months' old calf? If He made it in five seconds it would not be six months old.

Nonsense more subtle comes from the educated, from those who know enough to be preposterous in a pretentious way.

Hear the wise man:

God does not exist, because I cannot prove His existence: I can prove everything else. With my law of gravitation I point to a speck in space and say: "You'll find a new planet there," and you find it. If a God existed could I not also point to Him? If I can trace a comet in its flight, could I not trace the comet's maker?

Huxley says: "The cosmic process has no sort of relation to moral ends." That's a philosopher's way of saying something foolish. Lalande, the astronomer, remarked that he had swept the entire heavens with his telescope and found no God there. That's funnier than any ant who should say: "I've searched this whole dead caterpillar and found no God, so THERE IS NO GOD." The corner of space which our telescopes can "sweep" is smaller, compared to the universe, than a dead caterpillar compared with this earth.

Moleschott, an able physiologist, believed that phosphorus was essential to mental activity. Perhaps he did prove that. But he said: "No thought without phosphorus," and thought he had wiped the human soul out of existence. Philosophers do not laugh at Moleschott. But they would laugh at a savage who would say:

"I have discovered that there is a catgut in a fiddle. No fiddle without catgut--no music without cats. Don't talk to me about soul or musical genius--it's all catgut."

We peek out at this universe from our half-developed corner of it. We see faintly the millions of huge suns circling with their planet families billions of miles away. We see our own little sun rise and set; we ask ourselves a thousand foolish questions of cause and Ruler--and because we cannot answer, we decry faith.

Wise doubter, look at a small piece of iron. It looks solid. You suppose that its various parts touch. But submit it to cold.

You make it smaller. Then the particles did not touch. Do they touch now? No; relatively they are farther apart than this planet from its nearest neighbor.

That piece of iron, apparently solid, consists of clusters of atoms wonderfully grouped, each cluster called a molecule. The molecular cluster is invisible, millions of clusters in the smallest visible fragment. The atom is accepted by science as the final particle of matter. Its name indicates that it is supposed to be indivisible. When science gets to the atom it calmly gives up and says: "That is so small that it can no longer be divided." A reasonable enough conclusion on the surface, considering that you might have millions of atoms of iron in one corner of your eye and not know it.

But why should the atom be incapable of further division? If it is any size at all it can be thought of as split.

Where does the divisibility of matter end, if anywhere? What is there SOLID about iron? Nothing in reality, except that it seems to us solid. Already, with the X-ray, we can look through it. Forces such as heat and electricity pass through it more readily than through free air.

Science, which gradually finds things out, denying as it goes along everything one step beyond, tells you truly that the clusters of atoms in iron float in a sea of ether, just as do our planets going round the sun. Heat the iron intensely. What happens? You get what you call white heat. The white heat and the white light come from the increase of wave motion in this ether, and this ether, absolutely imponderable, of a tenuity inconceivable, possesses elasticity greater and more powerful than that of coiled steel. ----

So much for one small piece of iron, such as you would kick to one side in a junk heap. If it interests you, read pages 159 to 162 of John Fiske's admirable little book, "Through Nature to God." You will finish the book the day you get it.

If you are surprised to learn how much you did not know about iron--after living near bits of iron all your life--is it not just possible that your mind may be too feeble to conceive of God?

For the fly buzzing about the edge of Niagara Falls, the falls do not exist. The fly's brain cannot grasp their grandeur. It can understand only the speck of spray that falls on its wing.

You live with God around you, hopelessly incapable of perceiving His existence save through that faint spark of unconscious faith that was mercifully planted in you. Snuff that out with dull efforts at reason, and you have nothing.

WE LONG FOR IMMORTAL IMPERFECTION-- WE CAN'T HAVE IT.

All our longings for immortality, all our plans for immortal life are based on the hope that Divine Providence will condescend to let us live in another world as we live here.

Each of us wants to be himself in the future life, and to see his friends as he knew them.

We want to preserve individuality forever and ever, when the stars shall have faded away and the days of matter ended.

But what is individuality except imperfection? You are different from Smith, Smith is different from Jones. But it is simply a difference of imperfect construction. One is more foolish than another, one is more irresponsibly moved to laughter or anger--that constitutes his personality.

Remove our imperfections and we should all be alike--smooth off all agglomerations of matter on all sides and everything would be spherical.

What would be the use of keeping so many of us if we were all perfect, and therefore all alike? One talks through his nose, one has a deep voice. But shall kind Providence provide two sets of wings for nose talkers and chest talkers? Why not make the two into one good talker and save one pair of wings?

Why not, in fact, keep just one perfect sample, and let all the rest placidly drift back to nothingness? Or, better, why not take all the goodness that there is in all the men and women that ever were and melt it all down into one cosmic human being? ----

The rain drops, the mist and the sprays of Niagara all go back to the ocean in time. Possibly we all go back at the end to the sea of divine wisdom, whence we were sent forth to do, well or badly, our little work down here:

Future punishment? We think not.

One drop of water revives the wounded hero--another helps to give wet feet and consumption to a little child. It all depends on circumstances.

Both drops go back to the ocean. There is no rule that sends the good drop to heaven and the other to boil forever and ever in a sulphur pit. ----

Troubles beset us when we think of a future state and our reason quarrels always with our longings. We all want--in heaven--to meet Voltaire with his very thin legs. But we cannot believe that those skinny shanks are to be immortal. We shall miss the snuff and the grease on Sam Johnson's collar. If an angel comes up neat and smiling and says "Permit me to introduce myself --I am the great lexicographer," we shall say "Tell that to some other angel. The great Samuel was dirty and wheezy, and I liked him that way."

And children. The idea of children in heaven flying about with their little fluffy wings is fascinating. But would eternal childhood be fair to them? If a babe dies while teething, shall it remain forever toothless? How shall its mother know it if it is allowed to grow up?

Listen to Heine--that marvellous genius of the Jewish race:

"Yes, yes! You talk of reunion in a transfigured shape. What would that be to me? I knew him in his old brown surtout, and so I would see him again. Thus he sat at table, the salt cellar and pepper caster on either hand. And if the pepper was on the right and the salt on the left hand he shifted them over. I knew him in a brown surtout, and so I would see him again."

Thus he spoke of his dead father. Thus many of us think and speak of those that are gone. How foolish to hope for the preservation of what is imperfect!

How important to have FAITH, and to feel that reality will surpass anticipation, and that whatever IS will be the best thing for us and satisfy us utterly.

THREE WATER DROPS CONVERSE

Three drops of water, stranded in a crevice on the side of an inland mountain, talked in this way:

First Drop--"They say there is an ocean whence we came and to which we shall return."

Second Drop--"They say we three drops are made in the image of that ocean; that as far as we go, which is not far, we are miniature oceans."

Third Drop--"Bosh and nonsense. There is no ocean. It is all superstition. Before we were born here, from the mist, what were we? When we evaporate in a few minutes what becomes of us? You two drops make me feel sorry for you. I know that when I cease reflecting that white cloud up there, that ends ME. I have no delusions about oceans or going back to anything." ----

You know what happened. The cloud formed into rain and our three drops were washed into a tiny trickling stream. The thin stream of rain ran into a brook, the brook into a river. Soon the three drops were back in the ocean--possibly without knowing it.

Shall we some day go rolling back to the ocean of cosmic wisdom whence we came?

Is it possible that man is indeed made in the image of God, as drops are made in the ocean's image--the individual men, like the individual drops, being sent forth to do necessary cosmic work through the universe, going back to the ocean after each errand is done, and so going back and forth, forever and ever?

That would not be such a mean destiny, we should say. It would certainly be a very democratic form of cosmic government. ----

Inferior men, inferior women, unworthy of comparison with perfect, cosmic wisdom?

Not at all. Not inferior men and women, but inferior mediums, inferior brains, bodies and planets through which to work.

Is one drop of water inferior to another? Is any inferior to the purest drop in the ocean?

No. But one drop runs through the gutter of a stable, another rolls from a mountain spring, a third carries in solution the germ of typhus. But all three came pure from the ocean and all will go back to the ocean pure.

DID WE ONCE LIVE ON THE MOON? AND SHALL WE MOVE ON TO THE SUN SOME FINE DAY?

The most interesting questions are such as these:

Whence did we come?

Whither are we going?

And, by the way, what are we? Are we of any true importance? Are we a permanent part of the universal scheme, privileged to move along through the ages and see the end as we have seen the beginning? Or are we, as advanced science says, merely like the weevil in the biscuit--no part of the Baker's plan?

Are we indestructible specks of cosmic intelligence, lighting up and animating one material body after another--never destroyed--or do we play on this earth the passing part of the microbe in the Brie cheese, which gives that cheese its flavor? ----

A great scientist, coldly analyzing the chemical processes essential to the creation of each new human being, scoffs at any possibility of immortality. With the microscope at his eye, he magnifies nature's mysteries; he sums up the investigations of the Hertwig brothers; he discourses learnedly of the nucleolus of the Cytula--or progeny cell. He declares that science is able to watch the creation of a human being, as it watches the progress of a chick in the egg. He asserts that each new creature is merely the result of a chemical process blending qualities of the mother and father. Having a "final beginning," man must have a final end. Man--a mixture of two sets of qualities--has no more chance of immortality than has beer, which is a mixture of malt and hops.

Read and think over this cold summing-up of our mean, limited destiny as science farthest advanced now sees it:

"It must appear utterly senseless now to speak of the immortality of the human person, when we know how this person, with all its individual qualities of body and mind, has arisen. How can this person possess an eternal life without end? The human person, like every other many-celled individual, IS BUT A PASSING PHENOMENON OF ORGANIC LIFE. With its death, the series of its vital activities ceases entirely, just as it began."

That certainly is discouraging to a man who for fifty years has sung "I want to be an angel."

Yet that is what Haeckel has to say about our chance of immortality. But the other side of the grave has the LAST say, and we think it will discredit Haeckel. We should even undertake to do that now and here in two columns of a yellow journal. But we are DETERMINED before the column ends to ask you what you think of our moon-earth-sun transmigration notion.

The sun is now a blazing mass, inconceivably huge, inconceivably fierce in our eyes. Its flames leap hundreds of thousands of miles into space. If our earth fell to the sun, it would melt as a snow-flake falling upon a blazing forest. We certainly do not readily look upon the sun as our future home, if we accept its present condition as permanent.

But once upon a time, hundreds of millions of years back, this earth used to look TO THE MOON, on a smaller scale, as the sun now looks to us. If there were on the moon at that time inferior human beings, in a low state of cosmic evolution, they undoubtedly had to thank the earth for their life, as we thank the sun. To them the earth, then incandescent, blazing with the heat that now reveals itself through volcanoes, was simply a whirling ball of fire, put in its place to warm them.

They could no more think that men would ever come to live here than we can now think of moving on to the sun. ----

In course of time this earth cooled off. It cooled so thoroughly that the moon died of cold. Life could no longer continue there.

The dead satellite's destiny thenceforward was to show gratitude for past heat by moving our tides and cheering our poets. As life died out on the cold moon which had given us temporary hospitality, life sprang into being on this planet, now fitted to support it.

Here, on a larger sphere, with greater opportunities, mankind is growing, and will far outstrip all that it could have done on the poor little moon.

Meanwhile, as we struggle on, improving slowly, the sun, as science proves, is cooling off in its turn. The flames become less fierce as the thousands of centuries roll by. When we shall have developed as much as possible on this limited planet, our home will be cooled and ready on the sun, centre of our life in this corner of space.

We shall move up a step--as boys do in the public schools. We shall have been moon men, earth men, and shall graduate into sun men. Think of a home so vast! On that grand star we shall lead lives worth while, and justify Huxley's belief that men exist somewhere compared to whom we should "be as black beetles compared to us."

The excitement of meeting our brothers from other planets as they move up to the sun in batchcs will be great.

WILLIAM HENRY CHANNING'S SYMPHONY

THE THOUGHT--