The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1880-05-19

select, the land was rlcn and beautiful, but
there began to occur at once just what has
occurred in all Similar efforts everywhere, the
discomfort of the heart in level and station
airy condition. In st. Augustines little col
Ony, he had so much more brains than his
| fellows that he was soon eliminated from the
brotherhood. Chrysostom. too was detached
\ from his little circle, as being too large to re-
main in it; and just thus the great experiment
of Owen fastened to 90 to pieces, for one by
one the members of it longed to be out in the
world of problems again; for, instead of find
ing peace and happiness in absolute equality
and uniformity, it began to break the heart.
The soul demanded life in world where an
uncertain amount of money and fame and OF
| Joy was possible. Man is, indeed,
A CURIOUS CREATURE.
He will picture the JOY of colony where
each man will work six hours day and re-
ceive 50 in value, but having entered such a
colony he will invariably feel that he must
personally get out to where he can hope for
| SO a day and more individual fame. Hence,
from all these sOcialistic societies the best
have fed first, as though the idea were fitted
for dead minds and dead hearts rather than
for living ones.
1t is not to be doubted that some outside
aid should come to populace like the Irish,
or Mexican, or Spanish peasantry-some
modification Of tn state, some aid toward Sc
curing the first outlines of home and of ed
ucation, for it is foolish to speak of the slim
ulus of earth's problems as to men and wo-
men who are without animation or hope.
There are millions of human beings living
in such poverty and long degradation, real
and inherited, that they enjoy no longer any
aspirations, except for food and clothes
These need help. They must be lifted up
by strong arms. For these Il special tempo
rary theory must be framed and put into
practice, but as a wide law of humanity.
each man, young or middle-aged, in whose
mind there are awakened intellect and
ambition. will live Oest when
apart from all communism or So
cialism, he shall be swayed by the ever
changing practice of tomorrow. l do not
say that the uncertainties of property and
the dazzling dream of the pursuit may not
produce at last some men too rich, or some
corporations too strong, for such a result
might come to pass; but this, rather, is
affirmed: that if their could be socialism
which shtlld bring all men down to the
level of education or property, it would give
Us at last a civilization of lower form than
can ever be feared from the influence of mil
lionaires. This level of education and prop
ertv would constantly sink, for all the wings
of ambition being thus clipped, man, who
once had scared like an eagle, would at last
crawl like a worm. If one man reaches too
much money there are thousand homes
made happier by an ambition which did not
reach too much.
From this enigma of property pass to the
unread pages of thought and truth. Happi-
ness is indeed hard to define. 1t can not be
defined. But it will be safe to say that it
comes largely from the simple arrival of
something we had not. When the old phil
osopher cried out Eureka, how happy he was
because something had come to HIM which
he had not-a jewel had fallen into his soul.
When a good story is told US at friends
we 90 home happy because we have some
thing we had not. We are richer than
we were an hour ago. When YOU read few
pages in some surprising book, or hear
touching piece of music, you feel thankful
that YOU did not die before that book was
written or before that music came into the
world. Thus happiness is in one of its shapes
a widening out of our intellectual estate, and
the student, the educated mind, goes along
infamed by the thought that tomorrow
SEALED BOOKS WILL BE OPENED,
and there will be wonderful things uttered
to him from its long-hidden page. The
things already let fall by science the strange
inventions, and discoveries that have come
from her gate, now only ajar; the loud utter
ances OF the statesmen about liberty and
equal rights, the voices of polite literature,
growing purer and sweeter as the years pass;
the strange whisperings of Christian theology
in these later generations all combine to
make up the promise of dawn
for whose coming all hearts may well
await with deepest emotion. One can not we'll
complain at YOU if, marking that your days
are rapidly getting all behind you and that
the silver is rapidly coming into your hair,
once rich and dark, you should at times be
found shedding tears that no one comes to
open for you the mysterious volume. But the
same problems which thus bring tears have
all through the career of manIindbrought in
tellectual and spiritual power. There has
never been any communism of intellectual
goods and of the thinkers hours of toll
Some have thought day and night over the
questions of politics, and havegiven Moses,
and Pericles, and an Augustus, an Alfred,
a Prince of Orange to civilization; some
have toiled with science and have become
the Plineys, the Newtons, the Franklins of
history; some have pondered over God and
Immortality, and have turned into Plates,
ana 1auls, ana johns, ana LuLnerS, ana
Wesleys, and other images Of the Christ.
All have committed great mistakes. They
have often thrown their arms around fig
ure which was only phantom; but in the
pursuit itself Of the true, in the purity of the
heart that desired it. and in the intellectual
struggle to reach it, these all have uses
above the crowd, and have overthrown COM
munism by becoming rich beyond estimate
in the mowers of thought
The difficulties in the way ofacquiring alb
solute knowledge have suficed to keep back
the great volume of the unknown, and have
compelled it to be fed out little by little to
the human race. Aristotle and Socrates
could get only their little share. The two
Scaligees and John Milton were repHed to
be the most learned men that had lived up to
the seventeenth century, but even these could
not put an end to human inquiry; the i'm
mems estate of hidden knowledge passed be-
yond them; they enjoyed a rich income, but
were not permitted to make any inroads upon
the capital. The mighty inheritance swept
| nv Milton and all the deem thinkers to come