The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1879-01-02
FROST FABLES.
The Moral Effects of a Severe Winter.
from the Cincinnati Commercial

The Moral Effects of Severe Winter.
from the Cincinnati Commercially
Popular prejudices are not always
confined to the dark ages and illiterate
classes of nation, but may become
fashionable in the noontime of enlight-
eminent, and not among the morally
shabby-genteel only, for the experience
of our own century proves that the
grossest absurdities may be defended
In the language of science, or, as Mons.
D'Alember expressed it, "that our ma
tional academies are turning out adopts
in the art of making nonsense plausi-
ble."
Throughout Northwestern Europe
and English-speaking North America,
people incline to think that high lati-
tude exercises an elevating influence on
the morals and scientific capacity of
the human species, and that land of
perennial summer dooms it's inhabit-
ants to state of permanent sloth and
Ignorance, a view which Col Inger-
soil condenses, in his epigrammatic
way, by assuring us that civilization is
plant which can only thrive in the
snow"
Now, the truth is evidently this: That
civilization which fourished in open air
during the golden age of the Mediter-
ranean nations has become hot house
plant in the nineteenth century. We
may hunt or fight in a snow-storm; so
may the Sioux and the Seliuk Tartars;
but painting, fiddling, preaching, the
invention of labor-saving machinery,
the manufacture of shirts, steel pens,
newspapers, nutmegs and liberal lee
7tures-in short, all the occupations that
distinguish the civilized biped from the
two-legged beast are still carried on in a
warm climate, only with this difference:
That the inspiring warmth that once
emanated from the central body of the
solar system has now to be paid for in
the form of Youghiogheny coal and
4kindling-wood. Cold, i. e., the absence
OF warmth, per Sc, is as unfavorable to
the process of life as darkness or rarefed
air; though a partial explanation of our
modern snow-worship may be found in
the circumstance that frost, like other
evils, has an indirect value as an anti
~dote; it enables us to indulge, with com
parative impunity, in certain poisons
which the Southlander has to avoid on
pain of death.
A few months ago the papers adverted
to the discovery Of California opium
eater who was able to sober up" at
ten minutes notice by swallowing he
roic dose of arsenic; and more than 800
years ago Paracelsus found that the
progress OF a virulent, and till then in
durable disease could be arrested by
the internal use of mercury. These
remedies may be infallible, and, on the
whole, the lesser evil; but all that
would hardly Justify the assertion that
sobriety and purity can only thrive on a
basis of arsenic and quicksilver; and
yet it is in precisely analogous way
Chat cold climate counteracts tend
ency to sloth and ignorance, and miti-
gates the consequences of dietetic
abuses. -.-....,..- - ..
An intelligent observer, travelling
slowly from the equator toward the
North pole, might notice chat with
every degree farther north the forms OF
all organic life decrease in size and per.
lection, and he might thus arrive at o
conclusion which biologists have
reached by different route, viz: That
the tropics were the original home OF
all living things, and that only an I'M
successful struggle for existence in
their native cline forced animals and
plants to a snowward emigration. On
their way from India to Kamtschatka
palm trees dwindled to bullrushes, ar.
Dor vitae giants to juniper dwarfs, fern
trees to ferns; tigers shrank to wild
cats and bears to blindworms; and
there seems an PRIOR improbability
In the idea that man alone should i'm
prove under influences which stunt the
development of all other organic be
ings The paradise tradition and mum
tberless national sagas point toward {
southern origin of the human race (no
to nention the Darwinian indicia in the
same directions: A former happier
existence of beings of our species wht
held the lease of life on more generous
terms and enjoyed centuries of un
bought pleasures which now only tht
wealthy can purchase for few de
AIDES.
Alexander Won Humboldt remark
apropos of Brazilian fruit plantation