The San Antonio light. (San Antonio, Tex.) 1883-1886, 1883-09-04

About a Postal Telegraph With Variations
George William Curtis, who seems TO be
an authority upon most public questions, adj
vocates in Harpers We KY postal tele-
graph II IS unfortunate that people are SO
much in the habit Of requiring George Will
liam Curtis, or some one else to do their
thinking. Opinion is worse autocrat than
the leading crowned idiot Of the present age,
Alexander Ill, Of Russia, and it is infinitely
less important that Nihilism, or some other
social dragon, should abolish the royal scum
that remains in Christendom than that some
ism should put an end to that most absolute
and tyranncal Of all despois, Opinion.
On all questions people should learn to
think fer themselves oud when not sufficiently
informed get information, not opinion. The
country is full Of writer's who are not thinkers
and one man who does thoroughly hiE own
thinking, though he may not be able 20 write
hi, name, is practically worth the whole
Of them. Ne will do some good,
OF his own thought, so a man should be mas
ter Of his own character, though his repu.a-
ton, il public man, may be made by news
papers, and il not public man by the scam
dal OF his neighbors. The truly wise will rec
pose on character and let reputation go, and
not shoulder the evil, as many do, which
others think. We say the truly wise because
this life to such is a beginning, not an end.
And in our belief it is just as impossible for a
man who regards this life as the ultimate Of
being III there be really any such) to be Gu
pable Of teaching any rational philosophy as
It is for any creature with only the animal and
without the intellectual brain, to be so. is
pure unsophisiicaled nonsense. Blessed is he
who sits serenely within the tabernacle Of his
own thought, reposng upon God and not on
man, stIong in tie recognition Of eternal JUS
tice and contemptuous OF that temporal sham
which usurps its name. And one Of the
brightest signs in the zodiac Of the social
heavens is that these blessed ones are rapidly
multiplying over ihe earth.
But, perhaps, this il not wholly pertinent to
the question OF the eHpedeney, or social and
civil prosperity Of postal Telegraph. The
origin and purpose Of postofices are strictly
civil aud not political Il was held e2pedIent
for government to do for society what it could
not do for ITSELF exercise the office Of com-
mon carrier, so that there might be a concrete
system by which social inter-rela,ions could
be cemented, and facilities, impossible other
wise, secured for that end. The whole ques-
ton for the people to think upon is whether
the telegraph is anything but az improved
method Of carrying to higher perfection this
concrete system. If it be only that, the pos.
tai telegraph is not only permissible and ex-
pedient, but it is the legitimate Office Of the
government to establish and control it, pre-.
cisely as it has established and controls the
postal functions with which we are familiar.
We ind an ong our exchanges various lead
ing papers quoting and celebrating the opin.
ion OF this Sir Oracle of Harper's on
postal telegraph, and intimating that no dog
is 10 bark on that question. This dazing Of
better and healthier minds who do not rrac-
tee the arts through which dogma, edict,
decree or authority in any form is foisied on
society, by those who do, especially through
the fusiian Of rhetoric and glitter of type, is
what we want the common sense of the COM
mon mind to cure. We want men to do their
own thinking and never mind the opinion Of
George William Curtis, or any other man OF
society, nor the glamour Of its psrade-it is
mostly pinchbeck, and Il not so it is not theirs,
God has given every man the authority by
which he is to be governed in all things, to
wit, his reason, and the man who suspends its
Office and accepts any Weary in its place COM
mits an heinous sin. We are not writing about
religion.