The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1884-04-19
RACK TO NATURE.

The instinct which prompts millionaires to
raise fowls the office clerk to dig up and plant
his hack yard, the business or professional
man to break for the swamps or woods with
rod or gun, which leads whole families to
camp out for month, subjecting themselves
to all the Inconvenience of savage life, comes
periodically with the spring 1t is of the ma
ture which leads the bird and fish to migrate;
it is suggestive of the relationship men have
with animals and both with the earth
We are so early weaned in cities from the
breast of nature and turned to the culture
that comes exclusively of the interrogation of
man on man, that it is at times an advantage
and luxury to live for period primitive and
frontier life in the midst of civilization. So
men 90 hunting, or camping, or tramping,
and find what are the gross necessaries of life
when one ceases to live merely by tradition
and conformity Living in cities, men come
to compare themselves daily and hourly with
their fellows and not with their necessities.
To be a philosopher, one need not throw away
his cup or live in tub; he must, however,
solve some of the problems of life practically
rather than theoretically. He must ignore
the immense frivolities of manners and compli-
ments so love wisdom as to abide by it, and
that in all simplicity and independence, in
trust and magnanimity. Bryant could lead
such life lin New York-live without wine or
late hours, hot drinks or high diet. But when
the city oppressed him he fed to Cedarmere OF
to the old homestead of the Bryant family at
Cummington, Mass. This desire to get off the
floor and pavement, to divest the feet of
leather, and to take to the country for even
only day, is the natural revolt of the inner
emit animal nature. The fruit Of luxury is
luxury, and most of the things about us we do
not need Life consists with wildness-it is
not subdued in man. The fossil man of Men
tone is not different from the man of the pres
ent in form and contour, and the improve
ments of centuries have not changed the essen
tial laws of mans existence Philosophy was
the same with the shepherd and agricultural
peoples as now. We have sought out witty in
ventions have more complex methods of OBJ
tanning food, shelter and raiment, and run
more to and fro upon the earth. But still a
day with Emerson in Boston, and day with
Socrates in Athens, are essentially the same
thing there are no intrinsically new problems
or thoughts virtue is still virtue water is still
water The same questions are to be an
swered, and we still have to f'test the truth and
our own selves" The weakness in modern
city life is that people allow the demands Of
society and business to encroach on that
which is sacred to private and individual life.
They quench the spirit and the finest quail
ties of human nature, like the bloom on fruits;
are destroyed by much friction and handling.
Forsaking the essentials, or confounding
them with the trivialties, ideals and principles
lose their force; men relax in bodily and moral
discipline and cease to obey their finest in
stincts. The luxury of the rich begets vice
in themselves and in the poor. The rich wear
gold and diamonds; the poor get oroide and
paste Neither are necessary. We run to
bric-a brac and neglect stability in ornament
alton, in art, in architecture. Savonarola