The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1881-03-24

have never thought of any power OF
being invisible to me. It is true that
never framed in my mind the dreadful
word ought My ways are not quite
your ways; but still | do not touch
meek ly at the skirts of brotherhood with
man."
And now 1 would voice the reply to
science as her voices come to me.
| grant the plea. The kinship is close.
Wesley was right. You seem to me a
rough draught of man. Man see ms to
be reduced, refined, civilized copy OF
you. The kinship is either Congenital,
or as Aga, siz used to say, ideal in the
mind Of God. Now find in the human
body 80 many vestiges, heirlooms from
an animal bJdy something like yours
| mot to be explained, save as we assume
descent from common anCestor), that
must infer a congenital bond, l 90
deeper. and find deeper truth. All
things are linked in one blood ofkinship.
Life stuff in one is the same as life stuff
in another. Hop Seyler has found in
corn the same elements in the same
combination as in human nerve. Con-
terminous with the realm of life is a
limpid, spontaneously moving jelly. 1t
is protoplasmic life. 1t is the only life.
Bone, muscle, nerve, not even the throb.
bing brain of man is alive. What liVes
in weed, animal, man, is formless, COL
orless, transparent plasma 1t bathes
the non. living brain and tissues as air
bathes the world. etherize my neigh
Dor; the drug mounts to the brain and
lulls the living plasma. 1 give ether to
gorilla and his life is locked in the same
sleep. l descend on the life.scale and
ether.ze the sensitive plant. The ether
touches leaf, bud, bloom, and lulls the
life in the same sleep as the life of man.
l descend on the life-scale to the base
and etheTize the yeast plant 1t is
locked in the same sleep as bud and
bloom and brain. The eathereal drug
lays the same touch of oblivion on TIE
same life, from it's base in the tremulous
jelly bIeb up to it's peyturbed throne in
the brain of man.
To me the lesson of nature is unity at
the very core, one matter, one law. one
force, one life. one mind. 1 project nv
thought into the gray morning of the
globe. If nature were intelligent and
vocal she might have spoken in a vein
like this. Having waited through 30
man @ons-@O of beaded world.mist
eons of a burning sun and burning
world cast from the sun, my world has
crusted over at last into rock. This rock
is my first born, and l will spare it,
Shall /? Then to remotest ages this
globe shall be no other than dark, bar
rem, crystalline shard. No. l will tell my
waves to dash against it. / will tell my
storms to beat against it, From the
abraded fragments l will form other
rocks, in their turn to be destroyed and
wrought into still other rocka. The
power that works through me is one,
and it works by modes the same in kind
in the living as in the non.l living world.
Through change of conditions, through
tribulationa, through pelting storms,
through hungry war Ofmonths, life once
begun shall run its round of living,
climbing up through worm, gnat, fish,
reptile, bird, or shagged beast ar d man
From shagged beast to shagged man the
Chasm not wide to bridge. From shag
ged man to man the way was long, the
labor hard.
Slowly the beast bad faded out. Ami
NAL structures have declined below their
level in the animal. Go to museum of
anatomy. Let your eye range over he
u heshed frame of tiger, bear, ape and
man. In the animal frame you will see
precision of form and neatness of finish;
in the human, irregular form and rough.
ness of finish. Mans body, ideally per
feet, is beautiful, but it is built around a
frame that is not beautiful. 1t is tenn.
Pile whose marble walls and glittering
spires are buttressed by Coarser rock of
an older quarry.
We are working out the beast; we are
working in the man. In shreds and
patches he fingers in the body; in fierce
passion he fingers in the mind. When
he is rampant he sets in relief as virtue
the Crimsoned life Of the tiger. Only
little while ago, under the shadsW of
Boston spire, the shaggy beast in man
struck his wife, felled her to the floor,
poured oil on her and set her on fire.
There isn't jungle tiger toothed and
Clawed for raven would do deed like
that. Man with the beast in him sinks
hellward below any beast; with the
beast eliminated he rises skyward On
the Sierra Nevadas l saw an old hunter
his faced bronzed and lined and ribbed
with character like the granite of his
mountains. One day he took to the
hunt an Indian boy. Going down
deep canon they came suddenly on the
lair of two enormous grizzlies. The
bears sprang up and made one for the
boy and he other for the man. In the
hunters hand was a r tle which never
failed him; in the rifle an explosive bu-
let he knew 80 we'll how to plant. One
life he could save-his own or the In.
dams. He fired, and the bear about to
strike down the boy fell dying at the
boys feet. On came his own bear. The
grizzly terror reared itself on its hind
limbs, in attitude TO Cleave he hunter in
twain. Unarmed he stood, unmoved he
stood, and as a billow rolls from the
deep, breaks on a cliff and rolls back so
did that towering billow of brute break
against the cold courage of human eye |
Something we have found at least was
never in the brute; something in the |
lluWBl was lOb III JhO AOOVs AAOW GhLllO
into you the sentiment of mercy when
nature is not merCiful2 How c. me into |
you herois when nature is not heroic |
Justice when nature is not just In
your mind sound the voices sylabled |
never in the animal mind "Thou shalt. |
Thou shalt not" In you are the poles of
right and wrong. The body has come
from below. The psyche has come-I
know not whence. l believe it is divine.
1t is the anthropos, the upward locker.
1t may bel do not speak the word of
science now-it may be that when the
winged psyche is only nested in this
body of flesh, while the blue heaven
bounds above, and invitations, as the
sweep of wings, lure the upturned eye.
Science, while demonstrating the evolu.
tion of man, lays not the weight of her
touCh on his dignity, or on the empur-
pied robes his hope has woven. Trust,
hope, these old hesrt words will dwell
On human lips as long as human feet