Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1888-02-23
FOOD FOR THOUGHT.
An Extract From a Late.SermOn by Prof.
SMinO.


An Extract From a Litte.SermOn by Prof.
Swing.
"AIl the physical facts and all the men
tai phenomena of history betraJ the hu-
mility of mans early condition of
learning and thought. His food, his i'm
plements, his clothing, his arts, his lang
uage, point out a childhood of the mind
as having been once the characteristics
of our race. as far back as seen, man
grows simpler as his remoteness increas-
es. It is logical, therefore, to infer that
could we find him in the prehistoric
period, we should find his nature more
historic still; and should perhaps learn
that he was unhistoric because unable to
write history or to realize its value.
And yet man was not then brute. He
most probably never was an animal in
the comon sense of that term; for, even if
the early races or tribes did rot pocess
good tools, good arts, a copious language,
and an appreciation of history, yet an
impossible gulf lay between the human
race and the brute race, because the for
mer was able to make stone hammer,
able to make pictures on stone or a
piece of ivory, able to ornament himself,
able to make great progress, and to &C
cumulate wisdom and skill. Some parts
of Europe had no power to make good
history or to record history as late as the
thirteenth century, but the difference be-
tween these darkened minds and the brute
world was still infinite, because that thir-
teenth century was capable of rising up
TO
THE HEIGHT OF OUR PERIOD.
Our rade, was therefore, once much more
child-like in intellect than it is to- day,
and by that fact the range of possibility
was greatly extended, dreams became
equal to realities, and were unfettered by
the logical faculty. In our own age there
are minds so feeble as to believe in haunt
ed houses, generally empty houses or IN
occupied rooms. The haunting comes
from the emptiness, because there being
no men, women, and children in the house,
it becomes open to all the possible IN
known shapes, and is even anxious to be
filed. The mind hates vacuum as much
as nature does. Into the deserted house,
therefore, the childish intellect introduce
es ghosts or imps or unknown forms.
Man being absent, there are thousand
images which might be present. Thus
nothing is more prolific than ignorance.
knowledge is full of rest, ignorance of
conf ecture. The little noise on the floor
might be made by expansions of shrink
ing of wood or by the excursions of
mouse, but, in the absence of any such
knowledge, conjecture comes to the hearts
aid, and the noise is explained by all the
possible spirits from the soul of some
murderer to the tread of an archangel. A
fact is one thing only, conjectures move
along by millions.
A child illustrates we'll the whole human
family, while the vague perceptions of
child stick becomes horse; a bunch of
rags doll baby, because the child does
not know definitely what is a real horse
or real child, so to the simpler ages of
the human race there were many gods,
many devils, many heavens and many
bells, because the field of thought being
small, all the larger was the field of con-
iectureo