Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers
U >>
Unknown >> Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers
Pages:
1 |
2 | 3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18
Why should we not come back here again and again, taking varying
human forms, doing our duty well or badly each time
according to our start in life, and finally enjoying perfect
terrestrial happiness here as a finished race of immortal
beings--immortal in the sense of being indestructible and of
possessing the gift of perpetual reincarnation? ----
Now, this earthly reincarnation idea is what we have been driving
at since the beginning of this particular article. What is the
argument against prior and subsequent existence here? It is
this:
"If I am to live here again, I must have lived here before. If I
have lived here before I do not know it, and I do not look
forward with pleasure to future existence here in which I shall
not know myself."
This is a reasonable objection, certainly. Reincarnation without
consciousness of former existences would miss half the fun. ----
But it is possible to be in too much of a hurry. Let us suppose
that as yet we are not sufficiently developed to carry from
one existence to another the memory of former existence. Suppose
the time is to come when we shall suddenly advance as far beyond
this intellectual stage as this stage of intellect is beyond that
of the Bushman. Is it not conceivable that we may suddenly be
enabled to recall all former existences and to remember all the
various happenings of our former lives? May we not say, "There
is Mrs. Jones. I was married to her six million years ago, and
we quarrelled"? It seems quite hopeable.
You cannot deny that it is possible. For instance: You now
lead a continuous existence. You know that you were alive three
days ago and you remember what you did then. But a baby four
weeks old does NOT know that he was alive three days ago and he
does not know what he did then. He has not reached a stage where
his mind can grasp even the fact of continuous existence. We may
not have reached a stage enabling us to grasp continuous
reincarnation.
Think of this, and see if you cannot get some comfort, or at
least some amusing speculation out of it. ----
Science admits and thinks it proves that the inorganic atom of
matter is indestructible--that it persists forever. Why should
we not admit--and ultimately prove--that the atom of organic
force called a soul is indestructible and exists forever?
Every atom of matter, every particle of force, existing in the
visible universe will continue to exist billions of centuries
after the universe shall have melted and lost its present shape.
The nail on your finger will exist as separate atoms when the
Milky Way shall have faded from the heavens. How does that
strike you for immortality?
We predict that the mysterious force-atom called your soul will
exist AND KNOW ITSELF AND ITS FRIENDS ten thousand billions of
centuries from now and be as young as ever.
DISCONTENT THE MOTIVE POWER OF PROGRESS
At first the baby lies fiat on his back, eyes staring up at the
ceiling.
By and by he gets tired of lying on his back. DISCONTENT with
his condition makes him wriggle and wriggle. At last he succeeds
in turning over.
If he were contented then, there would be no men on earth--only
huge babies. But DISCONTENT again seizes him, and through
discontent he learns to crawl.
Crawling--travelling on hands and knees--satisfied lower forms of
animal life. It used to satisfy us, in the old days of early
evolutionary stages.
But the human infant--thanks to inborn cravings--is DISCONTENTED
with crawling. With much trouble and risk and many feeble
totterings, he learns to walk erect. He gets up into a position
that takes his eyes off the ground. He is able to look at the
sun and stars and takes the position of a man. DISCONTENT is his
mainspring at every stage. ----
What discontent does in the limited life of a child, it does on a
much larger scale in the life of a man--and on a scale still
larger in the life of a race.
You can always tell when a man has reached the limit of his
possible development. He ceases to be discontented--or at least
to show discontent actively.
Contentment, apathy, are signs of decadence and of a career ended
in either a man or a nation.
If a baby lies still, no longer wiggling or trying to swallow his
toe, you may be sure that he is seriously ill. The nation that
no longer wiggles is in a condition as serious as that of the
motionless infant. ----
The man or newspaper which imparts dissatisfaction--wise
discontent to a nation or to individuals, gives them the motive
power that brings improvement.
Ruskin as a young man declared that his one hope in life was to
arouse "some dissatisfaction."
The constant aim of men in talking to each other, in writing for
newspapers, even in writing novels, should be to arouse
discontent.
In this column, as our readers will have noticed, the constant
aim is to make the great crowd dissatisfied.
Only through discontent can changes come and are there not causes
enough for discontent and need enough for changes?
A majority of the people half educated, and tens of thousands
half fed.
Children run over daily because they have no playground but the
gutter.
Men of noble aspirations kept down by hard work and poverty.
Children left locked up alone all day while their mothers work
for a pittance.
Men, uncertain of their future and of their children's future,
engage in a constant struggle for wealth that is not needed--a
struggle that develops in the end a passion as useless as it is
degrading.
Unless you believe that the world is perfect because YOU happen
to have enough to eat and to wear, you should be discontented.
You should remember that the world's achievements and great
changes have all come from discontent, and you should be, in as
many ways as possible, a breeder of discontent among the human
beings around you.
THE AUTOMOBILE WILL MAKE US MORE HUMAN
One of the commonest and most disagreeable sights in a big city
is that of a strong, brutal human being beating a weak and
overworked horse because it refuses to do what it cannot do.
Brutality inflicted upon horses is atrocious. But the bad effect
of such unkind treatment of animals on HUMAN CHARACTER is far
more serious than the actual physical suffering inflicted. ----
The perfection of the automobile will do much to improve human
beings by taking away from their control and from brutal coercion
submissive animals.
Everybody knows that the moral standard is raised immediately in
a country when slavery is abolished.
In America we have abolished the slavery of human beings, but we
still adhere to horse slavery, accompanied by all the worst forms
of the old negro slavery. The faithful slave may be beaten and
driven to death. The driver MUST BE BRUTALIZED.
Every day, on every street, you may see stupid, muscular boys and
men jerking with all their might on the tender mouths of poor
horses, only too willing to do their best.
This brutal indifference to the sufferings of animals makes us
brutal and indifferent in other directions.
With the advent of the automobile and the disappearance of horses
from our cities, horse slavery will be abolished and men,
compelled to use their brains in dealing with machinery, will
soon become more nearly human than they are at present. The
practical abolition of the street-car horse is one great step in
advance.
The abolition of the truck horse, carriage horse, cab horse, soon
to come, will complete the dream of those modern and highly
deserving abolitionists, the automobile inventors and
manufacturers.
LET US BE THANKFUL
Thanksgiving Day, November 27, 1902.
Let us be thankful first of all for one great right:
The right, when dissatisfied, to SAY that we are dissatisfied,
and to try to make things better.
Let us be thankful that every man--with few exceptions--has a
holiday to-day.
However bad our national affairs may seem, let us be thankful
they are no worse. And above all let us be thankful that we have
the power and the constitutional right to change things, just as
soon as we become wise enough to use our ballots. ----
Let us be devoutly thankful for the PUBLIC SCHOOLS, for the fact
that every child is taught to read and encouraged to think. The
nation now declares that a child has a right to food for the
mind, as long as the child behaves properly. We are not so far
from the day when human decency will declare that every child and
every human being has a right to food for the BODY also, as long
as they behave, and are ready for honest work. Let us be
thankful for the constantly growing recognition of human rights.
The workingmen of America are better paid than they have ever
been before. More of them than ever are at work, and the unions
which protect them are more powerful than ever--let us be
thankful for these facts. The whole nation prospers when the
workers of the nation are busy and well paid.
Science has been, and is, making wonderful progress, explaining
for us daily the problems of the universe. Every man must be
thankful that highly specialized brains are constantly at work
piling up knowledge for him.
As a nation we are too big to fear successful attack, and we are,
it is to be hoped, too sensible to seek trouble with others. Let
us be thankful that all things point to continued national,
mental development on peaceful lines, free from the horrible
wholesale murders, called war, that have bled and weakened all
people through the ages. ----
Each of us individually has reason for thankfulness.
If you can feel that you are honestly trying to do your duty,
that is much to be thankful for.
If you are dissatisfied with yourself, you should be thankful for
the power of self-condemnation-- and thankful especially that you
have long and blessed TIME ahead of you to make up for your
mistakes and improve your record.
We live in a wonderful age--wonderful in the fact that life and
liberty are fairly secure; wonderful in freedom of conscience.
You can believe in Heaven, Hades, Christian Science, or in
nothing at all--and as long as you do not interfere with others,
no one can imprison you, or question, or burn you at the stake.
----
We should all be especially thankful for the steady awakening of
the national mind. We all pursue wealth--and doubtless
circumstances compel us to pay too much attention to that line of
effort. But we are all THINKING also. There are a thousand
times more thinking, reading men and women to-day in America
alone than lived on earth half a century ago. Love of knowledge
is spreading, and with love of knowledge, love of justice and a
sense of fairness will always be found.
Our material prosperity is great. But it is out- balanced by our
mental prosperity. We are becoming a nation of THINKING men and
women, and since that means real development, we have all reason
to be thankful.
THE HARM THAT IS DONE BY OUR FRIENDS
Thought lives through the ages, flies about over the earth, and
goes on visiting fresh minds, after the mind that gave it birth
has gone back to dust and nothingness.
An Italian wrote words to this effect:
"Man is commanded to forgive his enemies. Nowhere is imposed on
him the far more difficult task of forgiving his friends."
Francis Bacon, the philosopher, read in England the words of the
Italian and quoted them.
Vincent W. Byars, a very able thinking man of St. Louis, read
Bacon's quotation out there, and now, coming to New York, he says
to this writer:
"Why don't you make an editorial on that old Italian saying
quoted by Bacon?"
Italy--England--St. Louis--New York--thus the idea has hopped
about, until to-day you get it in this column. A million of you
read it, or at least glance at it; and so, if the idea has any
value, it will go hopping on all over the earth's surface long
after the steel press that prints this paper shall have crumbled
away. ----
How little your ENEMIES can hurt you! How little harm they do,
even when they try! You are warned against them and on your
guard. The world knows they are your enemies, and discredits
what they say.
It is quite easy to forgive our enemies, for they do us
comparatively little harm.
But to forgive our friends would be hard indeed if we could
realize how much harm they do us. ----
THE DRUNKARD'S FRIENDS
Who makes the drunkard? His enemies? No. The drunkard is made
by his friends.
When it is known that he is inclined to drink no enemy is so
vicious as to lead him on. No enemy slaps him on the back and
begs him to take "just another drink." No enemy laughs down his
poor, feeble attempts at reform. No enemy tells him that it will
not hurt him "just this time," and that he really must not refuse
to be a good fellow "just for once."
The drunkard is MADE a drunkard, is pushed into the last depths
of drunkenness, by his friends.
And it is his friends who kick him and leave him and despise him
when he has sunk into the mire.
Did ever the drunkard's enemy hurt him as much as the friend has
hurt him? ----
AMBITION KILLED BY FRIENDS
A young man starts out to succeed in life. His enemy may lie
about him, may call him worthless. He may think he is hurting
him. If there is anything in the young man, the enemy's lies and
discouraging words only spur him on to greater effort. They do
him good.
It is the friend that ruins the young man by false, injudicious,
unearned praise.
As artist, poet, writer, clerk, or in any other effort, the young
man begins his work.
It is his friends who tell him that he is a splendid success,
when he needs to be told that, at best, he has some slight chance
of success, and that everything depends on desperate effort.
Look at the young, conceited fool who, instead of struggling on,
rails at the world, feels that he is not appreciated. He is a
failure--a sad, foolish failure. He has been made a failure, not
by the attacks of his enemies, but by the more dangerous praise
of his friends. ----
The lonely and friendless often succeed amazingly. "Multum
incola fuit anima mea" ("My spirit hath been much alone") said
the great Bacon. His mind fed on loneliness, on failure, and
even on disgrace.
How much success is due to freedom from that harm which
friendship does?
The reader can finish this editorial for himself with hundreds of
other arguments. This is enough for a sample.
SHALL WE TAME AND CHAIN THE INVISIBLE MICROBE AS WE NOW CHAIN
NIAGARA?
When Solomon was gathering his materials to build the Temple,
his, large cedar trunks from Lebanon and his costly materials
from everywhere, he used oxen, mules, camels.
With all his wisdom, he little dreamed that the day would come
when his descendants, instead of using mules and huge beasts of
burden, would heat water and with steam develop a force
sufficient to tear his Temple from its foundation.
Still less did he dream that steam would eventually be
superseded, as clumsy and primitive, by the invisible force of
electricity.
When the thunder roared, the lightning flashed and his conscience
troubled him, Solomon, turning away from his thousand wives and
his numerous other doubtful associates, put his head under the
richly embroidered pillow, worked, perhaps, by Sheba's own fair
hands--it did not enter his mind that that lightning could be
tamed and put to work.
Man has been gradually controlling and employing the various
animals on the earth's surface. He taught the elephant to haul
wood and water and to fight his battles. He trained the horse,
the dog. He even taught falcons to bring him back birds from
beyond the clouds, and otters to catch fish in the bottom of
lakes and rivers.
Gradually he has made himself independent of his animal partners.
The rifle made the falcon useless; steam destroyed the importance
of the horse and the ox.
But apparently we have only begun using animal life. We must run
the whole gamut of the marvels of creation before conquering
conditions on this earth. ----
We used to train the biggest dogs to kill wolves. The Government
of the United States is now breeding darning-needles to kill
mosquitoes.
A certain kind of wasp, with a black and white striped body,
spends his time killing house-flies, and this creature could be
bred and used to destroy the disease-spreading pests.
Even the invisible insect life can be made most useful to man and
to his health.
The latest plan for disposing of city sewage involves the
cultivation of microbes, to be employed as disinfectors.
Several towns in Illinois and in Wisconsin have established
plants for the purification of sewage by means of microbe life.
The collections of organisms invisible to the naked eye are to be
kept in great antiseptic tanks, and employed in the purification
of the city 's refuse.
Mosquitoes will ultimately be destroyed, undoubtedly, by breeding
among them smaller creatures fatal to their existence.
Man, in his conquest and use of animal life, will run the gamut,
from the biggest elephant, employed as a public executioner in
India, to the invisible microbe, doing a work ten thousand times
more important all over the globe.
These infinitesimal microbes, bred and controlled by science,
will do regularly and methodically the work which buzzards and
vultures have done on land, which sharks and dogfish have done at
sea, throughout endless centuries.
To the marvellous workings of nature we cannot possibly give too
much thought or too great admiration. Gardens are filled with
beautiful flowers, and fields are fertile to-day because hundreds
of years ago sea birds were devouring the carcasses of dead fish,
acting as nature's scavengers, and building up the great guano
fields of South America.
There is a Peruvian millionaire in his big yacht, and there is a
rose in full bloom--the millionaire's money, the beauty of the
rose, come from those birds that picked up the dead fish five
hundred years ago.
It's an interesting world.
THE ELEPHANT THAT WILL NOT MOVE HAS BETTER EXCUSES THAN WE HAVE
FOR FOLLY DISPLAYED
This is an editorial which we shall merely suggest, and which
each reader will write out for himself.
In the Zoological Garden of New York a poor elephant has stood in
chains for years. The animal was thought to be vicious, and was
kept fastened tightly to one spot, that it might have no leeway
to do damage.
A short time ago its keeper became convinced that the elephant
would do no harm and might safely be unchained. The chains were
taken off, and the keeper thought with satisfaction that the poor
beast would now enjoy freedom and be made happy by the
possibility of moving freely about its large inclosure.
The elephant did not move. The chains were gone, it was no
longer tied, but it stood, and it still stands, in just the same
spot.
The habit of slavery, of monotony, had become too strong. The
elephant, though free, stands still, sadly swaying its heavy
head, ignorant of the freedom that has come to it.
Men and women and children who see the elephant, and other men
who write paragraphs for the newspapers, dilate on the poor
animal's "stupidity."
"The elephant has been called the most intelligent of animals,"
says one writer, "but this elephant, that doesn't know when the
chains are off, seems to prove that the elephant can be a good
deal of a fool."
How easy it is for us human beings to see the faults in others,
our fellows, and the animals below us.
But which one of us can truly say that he is not in exactly the
same position as that poor elephant, fixed to one spot by the
chains of long ago?
Are we not still standing as a race just as we stood years and
centuries ago, ignorant of the freedom that has come to us?
Thousands of splendid men have worked, lived and died to free us
from superstition, from credulity, from ignorance, yet still we
stand in the same place, and fail to appreciate the freedom that
is ours. ----
Millions of us, tied down by foolish superstition, are like that
elephant--the chains are off, but we stand still.
The road to peace, happiness and universal progress has been
shown us in the teachings of great leaders, but we still stand in
the same old place, fighting, hating, cheating, suspecting,
harming one another.
Here and there there is a little progress; gradually we begin to
appreciate and enjoy the freedom that has been given to us with
the striking away of old mental chains. The process is slow.
Look into your own mind. Do you take advantage of all the
possibilities that are before you? Do you use your brain to
control your existence, acts and habits for your own benefit and
the benefit of others?
If not, you ought to sympathize with this poor elephant, and
realize that as your brain exceeds his in bulk proportionately,
so do you exceed him in the folly that misses opportunity.
LET US BE THANKFUL
You get tired of reading editorials in which one man, spouting
from his editorial pulpit, lays down the law for you--without
giving you a chance to reply or contradict.
So let us write this editorial together.
There you sit--the reader--in your street car, or perhaps
clinging to a strap, and here we sit, impersonal editorial
creature, thinking over thankfulness,
Thanksgiving Day, and what reasons we have for feeling thankful.
Let us talk as few platitudes as possible, and try to get at a
few of the inside workings of human life. ----
You look across the car and hate the fat man who lounges and
spreads his feet around so boorishly.
LET US BE THANKFUL THAT WE SO READILY PERCEIVE THE SHORTCOMINGS
OF OTHERS.
Much comfort is derived from others' failings. In the quiet
evenings we talk of our neighbors' weaknesses and we enjoy them.
By contrast we admire ourselves.
LET US BE THANKFUL THAT WE NEVER APPRECIATE OUR OWN LIMITATIONS.
Each man's children are beautiful and promising in his view.
He cannot see the hopeless construction of their foreheads, nor
can he read in their eyes the sad absence of "speculation."
Let us be thankful for that. The future depends on the good care
awarded to almost worthless specimens now. ----
FOR THE UNIVERSAL INSTINCT OF THANKFULNESS, LET BE DEEPLY
THANKFUL.
The thick-lipped negro on the Congo finds a dead hippopotamus,
half eaten by wild beasts, and in his woolly brain a dim, misty
feeling of THANKFULNESS is born.
The Tartar bandit surprises mild Chinese conducting a tea caravan
across the stony desert. He murders the mild Celestials and
feels THANKFUL as he contemplates the booty.
A great Trust manager finds ways to add some millions to those
which he already has and does not need. In THANKFUL mood he
gives two millions or three to education.
As inborn, as instinctive as the beating of the heart in the
human being is THANKFULNESS.
Thankfulness is the unconscious acknowledgment of a Higher Power.
It is the indestructible evidence of man's permanent belief in
just government of the universe.
It is the most hopeful, the most promising feature of man's
character.
For THANKFULNESS itself we should be thankful. ----
If you want to succeed, cultivate a feeling of hopeful
thankfulness.
Hopefulness, thankfulness and success are as near akin as light,
heat and motion--the same force underlies, makes up the first
trio, as it does the second.
If you find it hard to be thankful, read a little of history, and
thankfulness will come. Thousands of millions of men have lived
and suffered to make your existence here at least bearable. You
may not be satisfied, but you have comforts that were not dreamed
of by the luckiest a few centuries back. You think the
prosperous have too many privileges.
Perhaps they have. But when your great-grandfather was a young
man a nobleman could order his lackeys to seize Voltaire the
greatest mind in Europe--and beat him almost to death. Voltaire
was locked up in the Bastile for complaining.
Thanks to the eternal row that Voltaire kicked up, you can never
be treated as he was. So be thankful to Voltaire.
Be thankful to the long line of plucky men and fighters--not
forgetting Christopher Columbus--who have gone before you.
Be thankful that you are alive in an interesting age with
interesting events happening.
Be thankful also that with thankfulness you combine the feeling
of dissatisfaction, of unrest that will push you ahead and give
you cause for fresh thankfulness next year. ----
We are thankful to have you for a reader.
We are thankful for the criticisms and friendly comments that you
occasionally send.
We hope that you will enjoy your dinner to-day and not regret it
to-morrow.
WHAT WILL 999 YEARS MEAN TO THE HUMAN RACE
The street railroad company in the Borough of Brooklyn has just
executed some leases to endure 999 years. Leases of property
have also been made for the same period, though, of course, a
lease of 999 years will be about as binding 999 years from now as
would a lease of the great pyramid executed the day after it was
finished, if such a lease should be presented at present to the
Egyptian Government.
These preposterous leases are interesting because they bring
vividly before the human mind the certainty of wonderful and
splendid changes in human affairs.
Pages:
1 |
2 | 3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18