The Austin weekly statesman. (Austin, Tex.) 1883-1898, 1884-02-28

t-dog-like or doeaish. Whether tina
word suited the thing is not now il
Iquestion. For the old-time brood o.
cynics, philosophers" they call them
selves, one might frame very plausi
Bile apology. Looking around them
they could not but see the hollowneSs
of earthly pleasures. Pleasure was a
phantom; the mad chase after it was
full of mockery, chagrin and misery
Grasped at, it is gone; forever eluding
and deluSive. The transientness Of
the outward objects of pursuit, the
! lmposSibility of building on such
foundations, the inevitable, the fore
doomed vanity of it all, made those
| old-time cynics-that is, the best of
| them in their better moodS-turn
| away in kind of surprised horror at
allowing their lives to be duped and
trltied with in that way. In the craze
for riches. in the craze for pleasure, in
the aesthetic craze, there was nothing
for the enduring soul of man to stand
on. He's fool who tries it, they de-
clared. Since everything else is shift
ing, transient, delusive, let man CEN
tire himself on himself; despise the
tickle supports, be independent of the
eXteTnals Of life; stand up and defy
the world. That was their idea of
virtue, of manhood. As to any relig-
ious ideal of mans life, in its moral
relations to his Maker, those old Gym
les made no account of that: nobody
in their day. did. And so presently
the cynic philosophy degenerated into
stark doggiShness of life, destitute of
either inspiration or aspiration, kind
of universal snappish growl-a sorry
dog baying at both earth and sky in a
cherries night.
But, curiously enough, the modern
cynic is like his ancient prototype,
with, however, a difference that ex-
actly revers the objects of disparage-
me mt and contempt.
If the old cynicism babe one turn |
his back on the world and betake him |
self to the castle of his own inner |
self, and there busy himself shooting |
out through the Fashioned portfolios
of his own self-independenc his ar
rows of contempt on all besides, the |
new cynicism seems more disposed to |
deSpise these notions about the soul |
and all that. and instead to look for
the chief good in lite as consisting in |
the sheer adjustment to environ
ment." To this view of life the indie
pendence of the individual person
ality is the phantom. The soul is
nothing but the temporary, the mo-
mentary incident of an infinitely huge,
blind, cropping evolution. It is nature
here, nature there, nature everywhere,
and nothing besides; and the total
movement of it is the best typiied in
that monster Virgil depicts:
Polyphemus, huge and stout,
With but one eye, agd that put out.
We are in the midst OF all infinite
but, SO far as the modern
cynic knows, there is nobody at the
helm to guide it. The universe is a
mill that keeps agrinding, grinding
fine all, great and small, that chance
and all things do somehow so chance
to fall into its hopper. Great Pan
is dead; the Gods of Greece have fed;
the Divine has disappeared. 1t is now
the ideas of personal independence,
it is the religious ideals, that are to be
esteemed, as empty phantoms! God
Is gone. The souls immortality is
gone. The supports, inspirations, the
statements of religion, have now be-
come the objects of cynical disparage-
ment and contempt. He is a fool who,
Ullo ulcd1ISLu VI LucTSOus |
would essay to 'hitch his wagon to
star" The star Of hope is dipped in
eternal night" From morality the
bottom is fallen out.
To be sure, this appalling convic-
ton OF the modern agnostic cynic-
who has suddenly cole to know so
much--this philosophical result is not
at least by the finer minds
hic al, hn 70 |
lessor Clifford, without a touch of the
deepest pathos. To be in a world
God means, for souls not
stepped in sensual grossneSs, to be all
adrift in the dark. There is no posi-
Oility of relief. The soul of manhood
s left grasping in a vacuum. Cynic-
spectacle; it has, it can have, no word |
If cheer. George Eliot may sing
never so plaintively of her "choir in
VISIBLE" when Immortality has been
1enied, and God has been repudiated
Is nonresident: M. Comte and Mr..
Frederic Harrison may try their best
% fashion an artificial worship of
humanity" and seek never SO earn
cism of their positivism tenderer
'plIlL VI lON6 duu uOpo. N6NOTGllt- |
ess, at the bottom of it is the old de-
'pair, which-with all coarser natures,
such as have never been
;ouched to finer issues through early |
contact with truer philosophy and a
pure Religions certain to degenerate
into essentially the same old
;ynic temper.
That, insIdiously as poison in the
blood, the cynic distemper may even
1ere and now have its run, and touch
with harm almost all the forms of
modern philosophy, literature, poll
lics, religion, and life, is very proba-
ole; but it would be to fall into the
same i'll mood to believe for moment
hit the healthier thought and the
anger, wholesomer faith of our time
will not surely throw it off. We don't
want any ill-gotten bandy-legged off
spring of Diogenes, whatever the |
special philosophical dress he now
choose to clothe himself in, about US.
Get out of our sunlight" is the best
word we can have for it. Let this new
as to the higher science
mi the real ethics, make haste to have
done with its day!
In the Sweet Bye and Bye.