The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1886-04-21
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4 MODERN DELIRIuM.

Empiricism is the bane of the American
mind. 1t is instilled in his school books,
propounded in the PHILOSOPHERS. and crys-
talized in his political economies. 1t is fill
ing the world with confusion by filling the
world with men whom each seems to have
distilled within his inner consciousness a
sovereign remedy for all human ills. The
man who has not ready-made remedy for a
cure of political or social evil is rare phe-
nomenon. With one it is land nationalist
ton, with another it is labor organization /;
another presents military government and
Csesarism, and another offers profit sharing.
Many or most of the evils are imaginary, and
all of the remedies are empirical, founded
rather upon what an individual mind con-
ceives them to be rather than what they
really may be. 1t is habit now to see ev-
erything through blue mist because to
the individual who is surrounded
with things he can not understand, never
did understand, and never will under
stand, conceives that he does understand the
beginning and ultimate of the causes and re-
suits of the things that do not favorably i'm
press him because they do not agree with
what his imagination eonceives should be.
There is no knowledge so dangerous as Just
that degree of it that misleads the mind with
conception that it knows everything that
its judgment of things is clear, correct and
positive instead of being reflection from
within the mind upon the thing without
that it judges, and therefore miscolors-an
insight that is positive it perceives the form,
size and color of an object that may not and
often does not have any real existence; or if
it has it is totally different from what it is
conceived to be.
These ideas are abstract, to be sure, but
that they are true may be seen by anyone
who will examine the confusion that exists
on all public questions. Two men, equally
mentally equipped and equally earnest
and honest, will look at the tariff, but
will they see it the same? No; one will
see it baleful, vasteful, wicked thing; the
other will see it as bene6cent, wise and god
ly. One hundred men will look at it and
no two will quite agree on all its proportions,
and each will formulate different PROPOSE
ton for its management. Take labor ques-
ton, and it is much worse, as the imagina-
ton is more excited on it, To one it is a
prodigious evil, fatal to the safety OF the
world. The other will have it that it is the
salvation of the world, and tending to the
millennium. The same is true of everything
else, because it is true that no two people
can look at anything from exactly the same
point, and while the view as taken from a
single point may be, and perhaps is true, it
is only true of that point. and the confusion
that may grow out from the conflict OF
views is as intense to the number who are
viewing it, and the intensity with which
they view it, and the degree of sensitivenesS
the mind may have impaired to it by educa-
| ton.
Education has impaired to the mind ex.
treme sensitiyeness to impressions, but it has
also indelibly stamped minds with empiri
| cal ideas or visions--not of actual things but
of imagined thipgs-and these impressions
discolor and distort the relations of all
things upon which the mind attempts 8
| judgment. The conception of real thing
may be individually correct, and the eoncep
ton may be nearly enough in accord with
the conceptions of another to be generally
reconciled. Bat the mind filed with pic
lures drawn by Adam Smith, and the MIND
filed with pictures drawn by Hill or Prud
hon, Will at once seek comparisons with the
one that has made the strongest impression
and it is not only possible but extremely
| probable that the original and fictitiou
impression may not prove stronger than thu
real view, especially as the original is a mi
Groom of a whole, while the other is only
/ part of whole; anyway it Is certain to mod
| ify it.
AS we see it there is too much of self
consciousness in the world for it
own good. Too much indwelling ant
mental comparison with pictures dcsitiou
and unreal; and too much OF empirica
formulation of ideas into realities. The ed
ucation has gone just far enough to compare
but not far enough to arrive at a self knowl
edge that all knowledgvts relative. not posi-
tive; that things exist not Is original emit
ties, bat - reactions FROM ~ infnity Q