Chapter 17

Nothing is more common than to hear men--especially great and moral men--deplore the results of civilization, of mechanical, industrial and scientific progress. We quote a typical lament by a noble and sincere man, the Reverend Charles Wagner, author of an admirable book called "The Simple Life." The author says:

"If it had been prophesied to the ancients that one day humanity would have all of the machinery now in use to sustain and protect natural existence, they would have concluded therefrom, first, an increase of independence, and in the second place, a great decrease in the competition for worldly possessions, They would have thought that the simplification of life would have been the result of such perfected means of action, that there would follow the realization of a higher standard of morality. Nothing of this sort has come to pass--not happiness, nor social peace, nor energy for good has increased."

Naturally, from a superficial point of view, it is discouraging to see poverty, ostentation of wealth, injustice and the love of money increasing, instead of declining, with the great developments in human power.

Suppose it had been said two hundred years ago that some day one single man, with a loom, would be able to make cloth enough to clothe scores in one day; that a few children working in a stocking factory would be able to produce more stockings than a million women could knit.

It would, of course, have been prophesied that when these great inventions came everybody would be well clothed, every woman and child would have warm stockings--and so on.

But we find, as society's powers increase, as machinery improves, and the means of producing and distributing wealth develop, that the struggle for existence and the display of avarice are accentuated.

The pessimistic man, observing these conditions, is filled with despair for the future of humanity. He predicts worse and worse times ahead, while he longs for the peaceable old days before the steam engine had appeared among us. ----

Now, in order to map out a parable, we must ask you to do a good deal of supposing.

Suppose, in place of the human race, one single human baby. Suppose that its mother had never seen another baby, and had no idea of the laws governing a baby's development.

And suppose, as the helpless baby lay on its back in the cradle, waving its arms, kicking its legs, gasping and blinking, that the following prophecy had been made to the mother:

"Some day that baby of yours will be five feet high. Some day it will be able to walk and run, and throw stones, and carry weights, and fight, and do all kinds of things."

Of course, the mother, hearing this, would have been very much rejoiced, saying to herself:

"My baby now is feeble and helpless, and I must watch it all the time to see that it does not roll out of the cradle, or that the cat does not bite it. When my baby gets to be five feet high and able to fight and run and jump, of course it will be free from danger, it will live happily, and I shall be free from anxiety."

Now, suppose that fourteen years have passed. The mother has seen the baby grow to be five feet high and fourteen years old, and the prophecy is fulfilled.

Is the mother happy? She is weeping bitterly. The baby has certainly improved in its powers most wonderfully. It can run and jump and fight. As a result of its abilities, it comes back one day with a black eye, the next day with a broken nose, the next day with a sore toe. It is always in trouble. It has even developed vicious traits of its own. It tells lies, it steals, it is even disrespectful to its mother.

You supposed, don't forget, that this mother never saw another baby, and knew nothing about the development of human beings along certain lines. Would she not be horrified at her child's condition? Would she not think it getting worse and worse, and that it must end horribly and tragically? Would she not sigh for the old days of the cradle, and wish that her baby might go back to its babyhood and live comfortably once more, on its back, with its hands and feet in the air and a vacant look in its eyes?

----

The human race has gone ahead, as that supposititious baby goes ahead in fourteen years. We have obtained many new forces, many new accomplishments. We have learned to use steam and electricity, as the child learns to use its legs and its hands. But, like the child of fourteen, we have not developed morally or mentally in proportion to our physical development.

But just as surely as the child passes on from childhood, with its follies, its quarrels, and its accidents, to mature, self-respecting manhood, just so surely will the human race go through its babyhood, through its boyhood, and on into years of wisdom, justice, self-control and real accomplishment. ----

At present we are in a childish condition as a race, just about able to walk and run around a little. We do not see our future clearly, and many of us look back regretfully to the simple days of industrial babyhood.

But those days can never be brought back, even if we wanted to bring them back. The thing for us to do is to remember that great progress and a great future are ahead of us, and do all we can to prepare for the future and hurry it along. We should refrain especially from feelings of pessimism. We should study and work to control ourselves as well as we can, and look ahead into the future.

Remember this very true saying and apply it in your attitude toward the world:

"It is not enough to believe in God; one must believe in man, in humanity and its future."

THE EYE THAT WEIGHS A TON

All our fussing and fuming about little matters must end in time.

It is a comfort to feel sure that the time will come when questions of wages, starvation, justice, supply and demand, finance, and all the miserable worries of to-day, from Presidential elections to the digging of sewers, will be things of the past.

Had we been intended for such things exclusively, we might as well have been put in a hole in the ground or in some cool corner of Hades to fight out our troubles. We should not have needed for our home a beautiful globe, swinging through endless space, bathed in sunlight or blessed with the companionship of other suns and planets whirling with us on mysterious errands.

Man's work of to-day--the fighting, the sweating, the starving, the cheating and lying, the miserable births and the dull, stupid, monotonous living--will end soon. Real HUMAN life will dawn and end the period of savage life.

Control of nature's forces will supply every man with what he needs to keep his body alive, his soul and his brain free from care.

Then men will cease their animal lives, cease eating to live and living to eat. They will live to think. The brain, which differentiates them from the animals, will give the real interest to their lives. Mental work--art, science and things worth while--will occupy them. ----

Does it not seem probable that when the day of organized life comes our chief interest will be the study of the universe--the other worlds outside of our own?

The great man will be he whose genius shall cross interstellar space as Columbus crossed the ocean. The great newspaper editor will be the first to get a signed statement from Mars.

The discoverer of that day will get from some older planet information millions of years ahead of our own.

As the dull mind of the field-plodder now looks toward the great cities--toward the vast movement outside his own little life--so shall men look away from this little, limited, but by that time well regulated, planet, to the mysteries and the grandeurs of the worlds outside.

Life will be complete in those coming days. Men will look back with pity to the time when they quarreled about little metal money tokens, locked each other up in jail, or choked each other to death legally.

Let us hope and believe that we may come back then to share the pleasure of the world's mature days, since we are sentenced to exist here to-day in the greasy, clammy period of struggle and half-bakedness. ----

While the infant sits drawing milk, with never a dream of solid food, the teeth are growing beneath its gums. And while we crawl around here now, with no conception of our future state, some of the forces at work among us are preparing for the days when real life shall begin. Among these forces you may count the constructors of the great cosmic eye--the huge telescope that is now building in Paris. Compared with all other exhibits at the Paris Fair, that great instrument will be as a giant among babies, a Corliss engine among children's toys.

It is the precursor of the great instruments which in the future will take man on his travels through space. Imperfect as it is, it fills the mind with awe and the imagination with delight. ----

Think of the great celestial eye, flint and crown glass lenses more than four feet in diameter, weighing a ton, and suspended at the end of a tube one hundred feet long! It will reach out thousands of billions of miles into space, giving us, perhaps, new secrets of the universe. Yet it is but a child's toy compared to the instruments which must follow it.

And you who read this, if your mind is fresh and your imagination not jaded, may be the man who shall add to the power of this instrument as Galileo added to that given to the world by Lippershey, the humble Dutchman.

We invite the young American of ambition to study this latest proof of man's growing skill, and see whether he can imagine anything to add to it. ----

"I have not seen it" say you. If you are the right man, you do not need to SEE it. Galileo only HEARD of Lippershey's discovery. He thought hard on the problems of refraction for one night, and as a result produced a telescope capable of magnifying threefold. He finally produced a telescope of thirty-two-fold power.

This French telescope magnifies six thousand times, but it is only a baby telescope, full of faults. It is rendered imperfect by the wavy motion of the air, which affects our sight just as the motion of the waves affects the sight of a fish. It lacks any adequate arrangement for light supply. The great trouble of the astronomer is the getting of more light in his telescopes. You may be the man to tell him how to do it without adding to the diameter of his object glass.

Anyhow, think about the big telescope. If it does not make you an astronomer or a great inventor, it may stir up your brain to the pitch of inventing a really good chicken coop. That is still lacking, and in great demand.

WHAT ANIMAL CONTROLS YOUR SPIRIT?

Of all animals upon earth man came last.

All of earth's animal creations are bound up in man.

As to the first statement there is no difference of opinion.

The Bible and Darwin agree that man was created last of all the animals.

Very superficial observation will convince you that man contains in his mental make-up all of the "inferior" animals, or at least a great many of them.

You, Mr. Jones, or Smith, who read this are in your single self a sort of synthesis of the entire animal creation.

If you could be divided into your component animal parts there would be a menagerie in your house, and you, Smith or Jones, would be missing. That thing we call a "soul" would be floating around, impalpable, looking for its house to live in. ----

Of course, you can see the animal make-up in your neighbor more readily than in yourself.

How do men describe each other? Do they not speak as follows, and mean exactly what they say

"He is as sly as a fox."

"He eats like a pig."

"He has dog-like faithfulness."

"He is as brave as a lion."

"He is as treacherous as a snake."

"He was as hungry as a wolf," etc. ----

Our good and our bad qualities alike are mapped out in our humble animal relations.

The horse stands for ambition, which strives and suffers in silence. The dog represents friendship, which suffers and sacrifices much, but whines loudly when injured.

We have no doubt that of the twelve passions which enter into Fourier's complex analysis of man each has its prototype in some one animal. ----

To rebel at the animal combination which makes up a man would be folly.

The Maker of us all, from ants to anti-imperialists, naturally gathered together the various parts in lower animal form before finishing the work in man.

A harmoniously balanced mixture of all the animals is calculated undoubtedly to produce the perfect man. ----

Therefore, study your animal make-up. Analyze honestly and intelligently the so-called "lower" creatures from whom you derive your mental characteristics. If you have not yet done so, study at once some good work on embryology, and learn with amazement and awe of your marvelous transformations before birth.

Then do your best to control the menagerie that is at work in your mind.

Stultify Mr. Pig, if he is too prominent. Circumvent Mr. Fox, if he tries to rule you and make of you a mere cunning machine. Do not let your Old Dog Tray qualities of friendship lead to your being made a fool.

In short, study carefully the animal qualities that make up your temperament and prove in your own person the falseness of Napoleon's irritating statement that a man's temperament can never be changed by himself. ----

It may interest you to note that when man becomes insane, the fact is at once made apparent that his mind, dethroned, had acted as the ruler of a savage menagerie. Many crazy men imagine themselves animals of one sort or another. Nearly all of them display the grossest animal qualities, once their mind is deranged. Women of the greatest refinement sink into dreadful animalism when insane. Heine tells of a constable who, in his boyhood, ruled his native city. One fine day "this constable suddenly went crazy, * * * and thereupon he began to roar like a lion or squall like a cat."

Heine remarks with calculated naivete: "We little boys were greatly delighted at the old fellow, and trooped, yelling, after him until he was carried off to a madhouse."

There is, by the way, much of the natural animal in "little boys." It takes years to make a fairly reasonable creature of a young human. For that reason many ignorant parents are foolishly distressed at juvenile displays of animalism, which are perfectly natural. ----

The same Heine, whose writings you ought not to neglect, describes beautifully a human menagerie. We'll quote that, and then let you off for the day. Heine was living in Paris in the forties, and used to visit a curious revolutionary freak named Ludwig Borne. Of this man's house Heine wrote:

"I found in his salon such a menagerie of people as can hardly be found in the Jardin des Plantes (the Paris zoological garden). In the background several polar bears were crouching, who smoked and hardly ever spoke, except to growl out now and then a real fatherland 'Donnerwetter' in a deep bass voice. Near them was squatting a Polish wolf in a red cap, who occasionally yelped out a silly, wild remark in a hoarse tone. There, too, I found a French monkey, one of the most hideous creatures I ever saw; he kept up a series of grimaces, each of which seemed more lovely than the last," etc.

If Heine's polar bears, wolf and monkey had studied themselves, as we advise you to study yourself, they might have escaped the sarcasm of the sharpest tongue ever born in or out of Germany.

FROM MAMMOTHS TO MOSQUITOES --FROM MURDER TO HYPOCRISY

You are standing with this writer on the edge of a stagnant pool in Northern Europe, fifty thousand years ago.

The trees are strange, the life is strange. There are certain familiar things visible. For instance, on one side of the pool there is an angry mammoth, with long hair and long tusks.

He is a huge, savage beast, monster of power with tiny, vicious eyes, and a curled trunk of unlimited force.

You recognize his resemblance to the modern elephant, and you feel at home.

In the middle of the pool, standing up to his waist in water, there is another queer creature. He has long, red hair, and through his lips you can see that in his rage he is grinding a large set of teeth with the canine incisors abnormally developed.

He is a shaggy, savage-looking brute, with a bloody and an apprehensive eye. You will recognize him as a human being.

As he stands in the pool there is a familiar slap of his right hand on the back of his left shoulder--he has killed a mosquito.

That is the picture. We leave the mammoth, primitive man and the mosquito to settle their troubles.

We call your attention to this. If you really witnessed that scene you would have undoubtedly said to the red-eyed savage in the pool:

"My friend, you can kill that mosquito easily, and possibly in time you will kill all the mosquitoes. But that MAMMOTH is a problem that you will not solve for a long time, if ever."

Had you known that the red-eyed human animal in the middle of the pool was sent there by Providence to regulate the globe, cultivate it, destroy the noxious forms of animal life, etc., you would certainly have believed that that person would have got rid of the mosquitoes long before getting rid of the mammoth.

As a matter of fact, the mammoth has gone, the woolly rhinoceros of Northern Europe has gone, the sabre-toothed tiger prowls no more. Even wolves have disappeared, and the mosquito is still flourishing in his millions and billions.

We have only just learned that it is he who gives us malaria, that it is he who spreads yellow fever and undoubtedly many other diseases.

The human race, which in its earliest, incapable childhood easily managed to dispose of the mammoth and his huge fellow-monsters, still stands helpless before the little mosquito, deadliest of VISIBLE animals on earth.

Is it not interesting to realize that the hardest work of the human race, as of the individual, is the most minute work; that the intellect, which easily copes with the heaviest and the biggest problems, is baffled by the tiniest?

Ultimately, and perhaps soon, we shall send the mosquito, the house-fly and the other buzzing pirates to join in the grave's silence their big brothers--the mastodon and the rest.

Then our fight will begin against invisible animal life, against the actual microbes of disease which the mosquito has been carrying around and injecting into us. It is a long fight, but, of course, we shall win it. ----

And is it not interesting, also, to reflect that in the moral, as in the physical, battles of life man requires the longest time to deal with his smallest enemies?

Morally we are still primitive savages. We are still combating murder, arson, theft--like the cave-dweller fighting the physical mammoth, we are fighting the mammoths of moral deformity.

Eventually they will disappear. Murder will be unknown, and theft, rendered unnecessary by decent social organization, will have disappeared also.

At that time we shall be fighting the smaller and more dangerous, more elusive and more persistent moral troubles--HYPOCRISY, CONCEIT, UNCHARITABLENESS. These are the mosquitoes and flies of the world of immorality that will pursue us when the big fellows--murder and theft--shall have been killed off.

THE MONKEY AND THE SNAKE FIGHT

We wish to tell you of the monkey and the snake fight, described by a witness in the Lahore Tribune. ----

Before men arrived on earth, when all the animals were racing for supremacy, the monkey seemed to have the smallest chance. No one would have guessed that the descendants of this feeble, defenseless little brute would eventually rule the earth, killing off tigers, lions and the other huge monsters at pleasure.

We have before called your attention in this column to the fact that the monkey, or some animal like him, had the honor of contributing our proud human services as the world's rulers BECAUSE HE COULD USE HIS BRAIN.

That fight between the monkey and the cobra illustrates this quite clearly.

The monkey was a little monkey, with scarcely enough muscle to strangle a hen.

His little black finger-nails could hurt nobody. His teeth were fit only to nibble fruit or to chatter in rage at his fellow monkeys.

This monkey had the misfortune to annoy a huge cobra.

Mr. Cobra is the most dangerous, the most formidably armed, of all living animals. He is a solid mass of muscle, gifted with lightning speed. The slightest touch of his fangs means death.

The brain of the cobra is about as big as a mustard seed. The brain of the monkey--even a small one--is several hundred times as big as the brain of the largest snake. We refer to the cerebrum, the front brain, which does the thinking.

The monkey annoyed the snake, and the snake chased him. Mr. Monkey, shrieking and chattering, rushed over the ground until he came to a rock. He stood still in front of the rock.

The snake dashed its head at him to annihilate him; the monkey jumped to one side and let the snake beat its head against the rock.

Over and over, this operation was repeated, the monkey with lightning speed avoiding the dart of the snake, and the snake, with never-ending stupidity, dashing its head against the rock.

Eventually the powerful, dangerous snake was stretched out at full length, bleeding and tired out.

The monkey was not bleeding and not tired. He was extremely cheerful. He seized the snake by the neck, just back of the head, and placidly proceeded to rub its head off on the stone.

When he had rubbed the head to a pulp. incidentally destroying its primitive brain, he left the dead snake lying there, and gratefully accepted the Indian corn and sugar-cane donated by the admiring humans-his relatives-who had witnessed his performance. ----

The monkey used his brain--the snake did not.

The monkey did not say, but he might as well have said:

"You need not wonder that my half-sister, Eve, crushed the serpent's head. We monkeys and humans have soft hands and no poison sacs, but WE KNOW HOW TO MAKE OUR BRAINS WORK, and that means that we rule creation."

TOO LITTLE AND TOO MUCH

Here is a quotation from a very wise person called Aristotle.

This Greek philosopher was the teacher of Alexander the Great, and incidentally he has been the teacher of millions of men since he began to talk philosophy, more than twenty centuries ago.

"First of all, we must observe that in all these matters of human action the too little and the too much are alike ruinous, as we can see (to illustrate the spiritual by the natural) in the case of strength and health. Too much and too little exercise alike impair the strength, and too much meat and drink and too little both alike destroy the health, but the fitting amount produces and preserves them.... So, too, the man who takes his fill of every pleasure and abstains from none becomes a profligate; while he who shuns all becomes stolid and insusceptible."

The next time you fall into a philosophical mood, and begin reviewing the causes of your troubles, see if you can't find some useful suggestion in the common-sense statement of Aristotle we give today.

How about the "too much" of one thing and "too little" of another?

Are you quite sure that you don't do too much talking and too little thinking?

Are you sure that you don't do too much drinking and playing and idling, and too little reading?

Are you sure that you don't do too much of things you like that do you no good, and too little of things that you ought to like, and that would help you to succeed? ----

We believe that every one of our readers has some friend or brother or son who can be really helped by the reading of this quotation from the old Greek wise man.

You can state to any young man or woman to whom you send this advice that the man who gave it formed the character and judgment of Alexander, the world's most successful young man.

DO YOU FEEL DISCOURAGED?