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 pa.s.sed. 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 supposit.i.tious 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 pa.s.ses 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 att.i.tude toward the world:
"It is not enough to believe in G.o.d; 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 s.p.a.ce 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 s.p.a.ce. Imperfect as it is, it fills the mind with awe and the imagination with delight.
Think of the great celestial eye, flint and crown gla.s.s 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 gla.s.s.
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.