Little Falls transcript. [volume] (Little Falls, Morrison County, Minn.) 1876-1894, 1880-01-02
New Years Reveries.

Another mile-post on the highway of
time has been reached, and many people
have doubtless renewed their VOWS to
put of their bad habits, and raise their
plane of active life to higher and better
standard. The most OF these good inten-
tions will come to naught, and the lesson
will be taught that the power and force
of habit cannot be SO easily nullitied.
The beginning of a new year is time
prominently adapted to reflection and
serious thought. It is time when peo-
pie are apt 10 halt and ask themselves
what the problem Of life really is, and
whether the experiences of life are worth
living for. The most Of people are forti-
fed with some kind of belief on these
points, and the question is generally rc-
garded as a religious one. The secular
press is not the proper medium for the
discussion of religious questions, and it
IS not our purpose to present in this arti-
Gle a religious view of life's problem.
1t is in the province Of newspapers to
deal with plain facts rather than with
poetry, and to discuss matters that come
within the realm of the natural senses
rather than those Of the ideal nature.
Life is surrounded by mysteries, and he
who takes time for thought is over
whelmed by the multitude of wonders
that fill his mind. Looking upon the
face of nature, the observer cannot fail to
discover evidences of the invisible forces
that lie hidden behind material sub
stance, but which give character to the
material forms that meet the eyes. On
one hand he sees perfect organic life,
perfect order, and perpetual effort Of
nature to build up and produce that
which is good on the other hand he sees
death, decay, disorder, and the produc-
ton of hurtful and dangerous beasts and
plants. He finds two forces at work
everywhere-buoyant life and silent,
dismal death are side by side; he sees
kind and useful domestic animals, and
dangerous and vicious beasts Of prey; he
observes beautiful birds, and loathsome
and repulsive serpents; the crop of grain
is found growing among weeds and nox-
1ous plants; and he finds the human mind
actuated by two conflicting impulses, one
leading to rightful and perfect thought
and action, the other leading to selfish
ness, wickedness, ruin and despair. Go
where he may, he cannot escape from
the presence of these two unseen forces
of nature. On one hand he is given
material body with all the necessary
functions of life, his blood courses through
his veins, his brain is made the medium
of thought, and he is the possessor Of fac
ulties which render him perfectly adapt
ed to physical and mental action on the
other hand he is followed all through
life by continual dangers, he is the heir
of physical disease and terrible accidents,
and he is always under the threatening
hand of an inexorable fate that never
finishes it's work before its victim is laid
in the grave, silent, thoughtless, pitiable
piece Of clay. Life and death, order and
disorder, good and evil, development and
destruction, happiness and misery, hope
and despair, appear everywhere side by
side. The observer looks further into
the economy of physical and mental ma
|
ture, and sees that amid all the death and
decay the human mind alone strictly
preserves its identity. The bodies OF
men and animals are constantly chang
ing; the path that man walks in is
strewn with particles of his flesh so
abundantly that any keen scented animal
can follow him wherever he goes. At no
time does person have any of the ma
terial substance in his body that he had
seven years before. The material body
at the best is but temporary, ever chang
ing and unreliable organism; but the
identity Of the human mind is never lost
The memory, that strange, subtle facul
ty, survives all these changes, sometimes
extending over a period of four score
years, or during the time that is required
for dozen different material bodies in
succession TO be formed and then dissi
pated to the dust Of the earth. In The
economy Of nature the memory is pre-
served as thing too precious to be De