Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers
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We know that some day the inhabitants on Mars or some other
planet will want to talk to us. They have doubtless been
studying us and consider us still too barbarous and primitive to
be worth talking to.
But when we become semi-civilized, in the cosmic sense of the
word, the older and wiser planets will get ready to open
communication with us.
How will they go about it? They are perhaps absolutely different
from us, in shape, in manner of thought, in every conceivable
way, including language, customs, and so on.
BUT GEOMETRICAL, MATHEMATICAL FACTS ARE THE SAME THROUGHOUT THE
UNIVERSE.
Will not the wise Martian who wants to speak to us and decides to
flash some message down here on our clouds, or on the surface of
the water, utilize the universality of geometrical truths in
order to make us understand that thinking beings are trying to
talk to us?
The sum of the angles of any triangle is equal to two right
angles.
That is true of every triangle, no matter what its shape, no
matter whether it be drawn on this earth or on the most distant
sun.
Therefore, when the Martian gentleman gets ready to talk to us he
need only repeatedly place before us two right angles followed by
a triangle, or a triangle followed by two right angles.
Instantly, like Aristippus, we can say there is civilization in
Mars, or wherever that sign comes from, or at least there is
organized thought. The mind that is flashing that sign knows
something about geometry.
Of course, we should also recognize "signs of civilization" if
the Martians should project upon our atmosphere a skeleton
hanging in chains. But it is to be hoped that the Martians have
got beyond that particular evidence of civilization.
SHALL WE DO WITHOUT SLEEP SOME DAY?
A half-developed being like man, hanging midway between primitive
barbarism and ultimate perfection, should study the insect tribes
which appear to have realized the possibilities of development in
their line.
The study of the ant and the bee, the spider and the scorpion
should fill us with hope. We should say to ourselves:
"If these tiny fragments of life can develop so highly, what may
not WE hope for in the way of ultimate possibilities? Our
beginning is so much more full of promise than the beginnings of
our tiny insect brothers." ----
This writer, taking his own advice, which is most unusual, has
been trying to get acquainted with some insects in the hope of
cheering himself and getting new ideas.
From the female scorpion we acquire fresh veneration for the
possibilities of maternal devotion.
The mother of the Gracchi has been well advertised because she
preferred her sons to jewelry. The Russian mother who feeds
herself to the wolves, instead of throwing her boy over the back
of the sleigh in the usual way, is also highly praised. But
their devotion shrinks to nothing when compared with that of any
poor mother scorpion of Mexico's sandy tracts.
As soon as her young scorpions arrive, they climb to her back,
half a hundred of them or more. She moves about with them,
protecting them, avoiding danger, giving them the sunlight.
Meanwhile they are feeding on her body. Her movements get
gradually slower and slower; finally they cease. The young
scorpions depart leaving the mother scorpion simply an empty
shell. We should dislike to see any such exhibition of
tenderness among human beings, but we can't help admiring the
scorpion.
Mr. Scorpion, placed as was Captain Dreyfus, would sting himself
to death. They are a determined race. ----
Spiders who construct tiny balloons with little cars all complete
are wonderful creatures. They cross chasms in their balloons,
throwing out bits of trailing web which seem to act as rudders.
In their little way and in a perfectly adequate fashion they have
solved aerial navigation, which still puzzles us. We admire
spiders and kill only those with yellow stomachs, which are
"poison." ----
But up to the present we have found the ant the most
interestingly suggestive creature. He has developed and
understands stirpiculture--the improvement of the race by careful
breeding--which with us is as yet mere theory, and as we look
down at the ant, we look up to him because the strangely active
creature manages to do without sleep.
We human beings drowse through thirty years of our threescore and
ten, but the ant is awake and working all the time.
If the ant has managed to live without sleep, if he has acquired
the faculty of lifelong wakefulness, why should we not do as much
in time? We take it for granted that sleep is essential, as we
take everything else for granted. We used to take it for granted
that the earth was flat, but we have stopped that. Sleep was at
one time forced upon man and other animals.
The earth in its rollings turned away from the sun once in every
twenty-four hours. In the darkness of the beginning man said to
himself: "If I go walking around, I shall fall into a hole, so I
shall lie down and wait until the sun comes again."
He did as all the animals did before him for millions of years.
Since that time, man has conquered darkness. Why should he not
ultimately conquer sleep?
We know that thin men, nervous, highly organized, do with far
less sleep than others. We know that old age requires less sleep
than youth.
Can we not cultivate and develop the characteristics which make
sleep less necessary? Higher races of apes have abolished tails.
Can't we abolish sleep? ----
As old age needs less sleep than babyhood, so in our maturity as
a human race we shall probably demand less sleep than now in our
racial babyhood. Perhaps none at all will be needed.
If that happens our lives will be doubled in value, they will be
complete. The hours of sunlight will be devoted to examination
and admiration of nature's beauties on this earth.
The hours of darkness, given up to sleep no longer, will be
devoted to the study of space, to investigation among other
worlds.
That kind of life will be worth while. Bear in mind that we
shall only really begin to live on this earth when we shall have
settled all the little social and material questions here and
shall have begun in earnest the study of the universe in which we
are a speck.
The days of the future will be given up to artistic enjoyment of
the beautiful. The nights will be devoted to intellectual
development and research.
Man will LIVE.
THE THREE BEST THINGS IN THE WORLD
If you had choice of all qualities which man can possess, which
three would you declare most important?
This question is submitted as interesting every man. We give our
answer; if yours is different, send it here. ----
SELF-CONTROL.
JUSTICE.
IMAGINATION.
Those we think the most important elements in the human
character. A man fully and evenly equipped with all three would
be greater than any the world has known. ----
SELF-CONTROL you must start with.
It makes life worth while. It frees you from the danger of
remorse, the wasted time of self- reproach. It sees
opportunities as they come; saves you from damaging temptation.
It is as important to a brain as is physical equilibrium to a
work of masonry.
A man without self-control, a building out of plumb, cannot
endure.
JUSTICE.
It is the foundation of all reputation worth the having. It is
to man as necessary as the compass to a ship. It is the compass.
Justice will give reputation for greatness though you create
nothing great. It will win affectionate reverence in life and a
gratifying gravestone at life's end. ----
IMAGINATION.
Greatest gift to man. It finds him grovelling here a pithecoid
littleness.
The rough hair is gone from his body. His thumb has lost its
monkey smallness; he walks flat on his feet.
But beyond that he has naught else to thank material nature for.
All the rest comes to him from imagination. Marvellous work she
performs. She takes naked man with his low forehead, with his
gruntings and whistlings through his teeth, and makes of him what
man was meant to be.
Very slowly she works, but ceaselessly. Her task is not nearly
ended. At her first glimmerings man's real life begins. He
learns from her to add wood to a fire. No monkey ever did it.
That stamps him a man.
Soon, with her help, he leaves the earth and travels off ten
thousand million miles into space. He counts the suns in the
Milky Way; travels in the air, under the water; harnesses
lightning, controls nature. By IMAGINATION he is made
CAPTAIN of this earthen ship on which he travels through space.
IMAGINATION separates Archimedes, working at his problems in the
sunlight, from the vile soldier that slaughtered him.
Shakespeare rattling his ale pot and Johanna, the ape, shaking
her bars at the Zoo are alike, save for difference of
imagination.
SELF-CONTROL to balance you.
JUSTICE to guide you.
IMAGINATION to lend creative power.
"Equilibrium, Direction, Creation."
The TRINITY ardently to be desired. ----
Long ago Plato announced that apparent differences are deceptive;
that all things existing come from one casting--the mind of
God--which he names "idea."
Similarly to-day the solemn-thinking German tells you that matter
and force are identical, that the interchangeable character of
forces--heat light, magnetism, etc.--is part of the a, b, c of
proved phenomena.
Haeckel stops digging up old bones and classifying sea
microscopic organisms long enough to write "Monism," expressing
his belief that God is anything and everything from Orion to a
tumble- bug.
It is quite easy to show that the selected three--self-control,
justice and imagination--are in reality one. Each exists as part
of the others. Each is made up of the other two.
But this column is not devoted to any save simple things.
The question is this, once more:
What are man's three most useful qualities--which three would
you possess?
Do not call this question idle or believe that we cannot change
ourselves. We CAN.
Napoleon said: "Never believe that a man ever changed his
temperament."
But Napoleon often said what was foolish.
It ought to delight you to know that you can change yourself if
you want to, as you can change the arrangement of your back
parlor.
Try it. It is hard work, but good exercise.
THE VALUE OF SOLITUDE
We inflict a piece of advice upon our readers. It is intended
especially for the young, who have still to get their growth,
whose characters and possibilities are forming.
GET AWAY FROM THE CROWD WHEN YOU CAN. KEEP YOURSELF TO YOURSELF,
IF ONLY FOR A FEW HOURS DAILY. ----
Full individual growth, special development, rounded mental
operations--all these demand room, separation from others,
solitude, self-examination and the self-reliance which solitude
gives.
The finest tree stands off by itself in the open plain. Its
branches spread wide. It is a complete tree, better than the
cramped tree in the crowded forest.
The animal to be admired is not that which runs in herds, the
gentle browsing deer or foolish sheep thinking only as a fraction
of the flock, incapable of personal independent direction. It's
the lonely prowling lion or the big black leopard with the whole
world for his private field that is worth looking at.
The man who grows up in a herd, deer-like, thinking with the
herd, acting with the herd, rarely amounts to anything. ----
Do you want to succeed? Grow in solitude, work, develop in
solitude, with books and thoughts and nature for friends. Then,
if you want the crowd to see how fine you are, come back to it
and boss it if it will let you.
Constant craving for indiscriminate company is a sure sign of
mental weakness.
Schopenhauer--a sour genius, BUT a genius--speaks contemptuously
of the negroes herded in small rooms unable to get "enough of one
another's snub-nose company." ----
If you enter a village or small town and want to find the man or
youth of ability, do you look for him leaning over the village
pool table, sitting on the grocery store boxes, lounging in the
smelly tavern with other vacant minds?
Certainly not. You find him at work, and you find him by
himself.
Think how public institutions dwarf the brains and souls of
unhappy children condemned to live in them. No chance there for
individual, separate development. Millions of children have
grown up in such places millions of sad nonentities. ----
Here is what Goethe says:
"Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille, doch ein Charakter in
dem Strome der Welt." (Talent is developed in solitude, character
in the rush of the world.)
You wonder why so much ability comes from the country--why a
Lincoln comes from the backwoods while you, flourishing in a
great city, can barely keep your place as a typewriter.
The countryman has GOT to be by himself much of the time whether
he wishes to or not. If he has anything in him it comes out.
Astronomy, man's grandest study, grew up among the shepherds.
You of the cities never even see the stars, much less study them.
----
Don't be a sheep or a deer. Don't devote your hours to the
company and conversation of those who know as little as you do.
Don't think hard only when you are trying to remember a popular
song or to decide on the color of your Winter overcoat or
necktie.
Remember that you are an individual, not a grain of dust or a
blade of grass. Don't be a sheep; be a man. It has taken nature
a hundred million years to produce you. Don't make her sorry she
took the time.
Get out in the park and walk and think. Get up in your hall
bedroom, read, study, write what you think. Talk more to
yourself and less to others. Avoid magazines, avoid excessive
newspaper reading.
There is not a man of average ability but could make a striking
career if he could but WILL to do the best that is in him.
Proofs of growth due to solitude are endless. Milton's greatest
work was done when blindness, old age and the death of the
Puritan government forced him into completest seclusion.
Beethoven did his best work in the solitude of deafness.
Bacon would never have been the great leader of scientific
thought had not his trial and disgrace forced him from the
company of a grand retinue and stupid court to the solitude of
his own brain.
"Multum insola fuit anima mea." (My spirit hath been much alone.)
This he said often, and lucky it was for him. Loneliness of
spirit made him.
Get a little of it for yourself.
Drop your club, your street corner, your gossipy boarding-house
table. Drop your sheep life and try being a man.
It may improve you.
THERE SHOULD BE A MONUMENT TO TIME
Time has no real existence. Yet time is man's most precious
possession.
Time is defined as a "succession of events." What we call an
hour means certain movements in the machinery of a watch. What
we call a day means one revolution of the earth upon its axis,
the turning of its surface toward the light of the sun. Time is
the most mysterious factor in our lives and thoughts. It never
had a beginning, it cannot possibly have an end.
Time only exists for us in the actual moment in which we live.
Yet our thoughts are in the time of past and future, and hardly
ever on the actual reality of the moment.
With the ceasing of our own consciousness, time ceases, so far as
we are concerned. If you go to sleep and sleep soundly, you
cannot tell when you awake whether you have slept a minute or an
hour. Time stops when YOU cease to observe the succession of
events. In dying, we duplicate on a big and prolonged scale our
little daily sleeps in life.
If a man were told that after death his soul would not regain
consciousness for a thousand millions of years, he would worry,
and complain of the "long time." But it would make no difference
to him whether the time were a thousand millions of years or
forty seconds--time would not exist for him; he would not know
the difference.
There is little doubt that to the ephemeridae, creatures that
live but for a day, that day must seem as long as our century,
for in their life of incessant activity and agitation every
second is a long space. And there is no doubt that to the giant
turtles of the Galapagos Islands, heavy monsters that live ten
centuries or longer, a week is a fraction of time far less
important than an hour to us. ----
A mysterious thing is time and its divisions. Man manufactures a
watch capable of registering a fraction of a second. And in the
force called light we have a power that can go seven times around
the world in one second.
We estimate our time by years. It takes one year for our little
earth to spin round the sun. And during that year it turns three
hundred and sixty-five times on its own axis. While the entire
body of our earth flies through space, accompanying the sun on
its journey, the northern extremity of our planet has a separate
circular motion of its own. This circular motion takes
twenty-seven thousand years to complete one circle, and as it
moves in this inconceivably slow journey our pole selects for us
and points out the various suns which in turn we call the North
Star.
We have written thus much to fix the attention of readers on the
question of time. Now, how does it affect you? Time represents
your only chance, your only wealth, your only possibility for
achieving anything.
The man who lasts fifty years lives about four hundred and
thirty-eight thousand hours. Sleep takes at least one-third, or
one hundred and forty-six thousand hours. The processes of
eating, washing, dressing, getting up and going to bed take up at
least three hours per day, or fifty-four thousand seven hundred
and fifty hours.
In addition to all this TIME cut out of our lives there is the
time devoted to amusement, the time devoted to idle dreaming--and
yet millions of people are wondering how they can "PASS THE
TIME."
In every great city and in every small town there should be a
monument to time. Young children should be taken to see it,
clergymen should preach at the foot of it on the sacred
importance of the few hours of activity given to us here. As the
sand runs through an hour glass, so you run your short race on
this earth. That passing sand means the passing of your chances
for making your life worth while. Instead of thinking how you
WILL pass the time, cross-examine yourself and ask yourself how
you HAVE passed the time thus far.
What did you do last year--what use did you make of the time as
it went by? What did you do yesterday? What are you going to do
to-day? You possess a mind organized for practically unlimited
thinking and studying. How many of your hours do you live as a
thinking, studying man? How many do you live on a par with an ox
chewing his cud in the field?
The ox does not waste HIS time. It is his business to grow fat
and produce beef. He uses every hour. It is your business to
use your time in the development of your mind, in dealing with
the duties and problems that are put before you.
Every young man can make a success if he will really look upon
each hour as an OPPORTUNITY, and cease to look upon the hours as
useless things, to be thrown away.
One hour will give you a knowledge of some good book, or wisely
spent, with a purpose of improving your health, it will make your
brain more efficient and add to the value of all future hours.
If you have a horse, a bicycle, a gun, you feel that because you
HAVE it you ought to USE it.
How much more should you feel that you ought to use your TIME, in
using which you use your own brain! Surely, your brain is more
important and more worthy of conscientious use than a bicycle or
a gun.
Talk to children on this question of time. Teach them that
respect for time means respect for their own lives and success in
life.
A MOTHER'S WORK AND HER HOPES
This editorial is not written for women. It is written for MEN,
and for boys; for the millions who fail to appreciate the work
that mothers do, for the millions that ignore the self-sacrifice
and devotion upon which society is based.
On a hot night, in the dusty streets of a dirty city, you see
hundreds of women sitting in the doorways, TAKING CARE OF BABIES.
In lonesome farm houses, far out on monotonous plains, with the
late sun setting on a long day of hard work, you find women,
cheerful and persevering, TAKING CARE OF BABIES.
In the middle of the night, in earliest morning, when MEN sleep,
all over the world, in ice huts North, in southern tents, in big
houses and in dingy tenements, you find women awake, cheerfully
and gladly TAKING CARE OF BABIES. ----
We respect and praise the man selfishly working for himself.
If he builds up a great industry and a great personal fortune, we
praise him.
If he risks his life for personal glory and for praise, we praise
him.
If he shows courage even in saving his own carcass from
destruction, we praise him.
There was never a man whose courage, or devotion, could be
compared with that of a woman caring for her baby.
The mother's love is unselfish, and it has no limit this side of
the grave.
You will find ONE man in a thousand who will risk his life for a
cause.
You will find a THOUSAND women in a thousand who will risk their
lives for their babies.
Everything that a man has and is he owes to his mother. From her
he gets health, brain, encouragement, moral character, and ALL
his chances of success.
How poorly the mother's service is repaid by men individually,
and by society as a whole!
The individual man feels that he has done much if he gives
sufficient money and a LITTLE attention to her who brought him
from nothingness into life and sacrificed her sleep and youth and
strength for his sake.
Society, the aggregate of human beings, feels that its duty is
done when a few hospitals are opened for poor mothers, and a
little medicine doled out in cold-hearted fashion to the sick
child.
Fortunately, it may truly be said that the great man is almost
always appreciative of his greater mother.
Napoleon was cold, jealous of other men, monumentally egotistical
when comparing himself with other sons of women. But he
reverenced and appreciated the noble woman who bore him, lived
for him, and watched over him to the end. He said:
"It is to my mother, to her good principles, that I owe my
success and all I have that is worth while. I do not hesitate
to say that the future of the child depends on the mother."
----
The future of the individual child depends on the individual
mother, and the future of the race depends on the mothers of the
race.
Think what has been done for mankind by thousands of millions of
perfectly devoted mothers.
Every mother is entirely DEVOTED, entirely HOPEFUL, entirely
CONFIDENT that no future is too great for her baby's deserts.
The little head--often hopelessly ill-shaped--rolls about feebly
on the thin neck devoid of muscles. The toothless gums chew
whatever comes along. The wondering eyes look feebly, aimlessly
about, without focus or concentration. The future human being,
to the cold-blooded onlooker, is a useless little atom added to
the human sea of nonentity.
But to the mother that baby is the marvel of all time. There is
endless meaning in the first mumblings, endless soul in the
senile, baby smile, unlimited possibilities in the knobby
forehead and round, hairless head. She sees in the future of the
baby responsibilities of government, and feels that one so
perfectly lovely must eventually be acclaimed ruler by mankind.
As a result of perfect confidence in its future, the mother gives
to every baby perfect devotion, perfect and affectionate moral
education. Each child begins life inspired by the most beautiful
example of altruism and self-sacrifice.
Kindness has gradually taken the place of brutality among human
beings, because every baby at its birth has found itself
surrounded by absolute kindness.
The mother's kindness forms moral character.
The mother's confidence and encouragement stimulate ambition and
inspire courage.
The mother's patient watchfulness gives good health, and fights
disease when it comes.
The mother's wrathful protection shields the child from the stern
and dwarfing severity of fathers.
Truly, a man may and should be judged by his feeling toward his
own mother, and toward the mothers of other men--of ALL men.
In the character of Christ, whose last earthly thought on
Golgotha was for His Mother, as in the character of the
hard-working, ignorant man whose earnings go to make his mother
comfortable, the most beautiful trait is devotion to the mother
who suffers and works for her children, from the hours that
precede their birth through all the years that they spend on
earth together.
Honor thy father and THY MOTHER.
And honor the mothers of other men. Make their task easier
through fair payment of the men who support the children, through
good public schools for their children, through respectful
treatment of ALL women.
The mother is happy. For she knows "the deep joy of loving some
one else more than herself."
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