Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1880-01-17


Thus the complexity of modern civiliza-
ton tends to repress mental growth. The
friyolities of what may be called merely
animal rivalry and conference.-the same
kind of rivalry known TO the lowest
savages-are elaborated and expanded in
these days until they afford employment
for lifetime, and countless thousands
have become so absorbed in them as to
know no other life. But it is evident that
in this groove no advancement can be
found. 1t is numbing and paralyzing to
the mind. 1t is brutalizing, though it
wears the mask of higher civilization.
There is no room for thought, for brain
growth, for spiritual expansion, where the
exacting idol Fashion holds sway, and I'M
happily millions pay allegiance to the god
dess who are unaware that they are her
faithful subjects. There is one fact
which ought to give pause to the thought
full 1t Is, that all important advances
have been made hitherto by convention
breakers ; that Is to say, by people who
have refused to follow the beaten paths,
but have insisted on striking out ways for
themselves Herein lies the secret of all
true progress, and the key to the problem
of the slow growth of intelligence. And
until an advance has been reached which
will break the rule of Fashion, it is perhaps
useless to anticipate an intellectual renais-
sance corresponding in extent and impor-
lance to the Scientific march of the present
time So far the situation seems to be
embarrassed by the paradox that with the
increase Of physical comforts the Difficult
ties of earning a snfficiency must grow,
and that consequently the energies OF men
must be so monopolized by the cares of
daily business as to leave no room for
mental development. Coupling this with
the physiological fact that reproduction is
endangered by excessive cerebral cultiva-
ton, we seem to have reached the perplex-
ing conclusion that civilization contains the
seeds of its own destruction, and that its
natural unfolding must at no remote period
bring about its extinction. But it is rea-
sonable to suppose that all the conditions
of human existence are capable of being
very greatly changed, and that the devel-
opment Of that philosophy which is begin
ming now to be adopted may in time pro-
duce a revolution even greater than the
establishment Of any great religion has
caused in the past 1t is conceivable that
with the growth Of Altruism may arise a
more general inclination to do whatever
can be done towards furthering the inter-
ests OF the race. The Positivist idea of
q Religion of Humanity has at least so
much truth at bottom that a normal
result of the better balancing of
the physical and intellectual faculties
must be the establishment Of common
regard for Humanity as such. Of course
these are but speculations. Whatever pro-
nounced intellectual movement may be in
store for the race is still in the womb of
the future, and the peoples cling to the old
dull mill-round of sordid pursuits, sordid
pleasures, sordid limitations and apings of
culture, which have been familiar from the
The very fact, however, that
modern civilization seems to point toward
its own extirpation through the methods
from its nature, warrants the
belief that some factors of vital Importance
are yet to be discovered, and that, as the
tendency of Nature is ever toward the per-
fectihg of existing types, that tendency
will be applied here with the usual results.