St. Landry democrat. (Opelousas, La.) 1878-1894, 1888-04-14
coNcE,T OF TO-DAY.


There is always to be heard and read,
under one form or another of express
sion, a great deal of indulgence in
mutual congratulation as to this nine
teenth century of ours and all of its
accomplishment, its tremendous intel
lectual force, its wonderful achieve
ments, while we speak and think of it
as though the nineteenth century were
something that had suddenly wheeled
out of space, unrelated to any thing
that had gone before. wheeled out as
the new burning star in the Northern
Crown did. as something integral with
out any debt to the past But in reali-
ty the nineteenth century has no such
separate and individual existence; it is
the last length of the growing stem. and
if the life and juice of the stem have run
into it more freely, so that it blosso ms
more generously, it is the other lengths
nearer the root that have conducted it
that life and juice; and thus much that
has come to perfection in the nine
teenth century is indeed but the COM
pleted force of the eighteenth, and
even of others that have preceded that.
Had not Franklin. a hundred years or
so earlier, sent his kite into the air,
would Morse have sent speech in view
less fire through the air, would Bell
have carried whisper after it around
the earth. and would the various cleo
tricians have kindled their electric
lights refulgent at midnight as the
moons of the tropicse If Watt had not
watched his teakettle lid tremble and
dance and lift with the steam
beneath it, would the prodigious mo-
tive powers that move the commerce of
the world have ever been brought into
beinga Every thing in life is the re-
suit of something that has gone before
it. We have no actual right to attri-
butte any great doings to ourselves; We
are like the sons of rich men whose
money has been made for them, de-
serving or undeserving, and who are
only required to let it lie at interest in
order to receive income; we are simply
the heirs of ssall the ages in the fore
most files of time"
Itisisot SO fiattering to our vanity to
acknowledge our debt to those that
have preceded us, those for whom pos
sibly we entertain some Indifferent dis
dain. as, like Mr.. Bounderby, to imagine
and proclaim ourselves self-made. But
it is interesting now and then to get a
glimpse of the truth, and to under
stand, not only as a truism as respects
the passage of time, but as a fact re-
speeding the work. discovery and
general greatness of this era, that
there never would have been any nine
teenth century if also there had not
already been an eighteenth = Hiber-
nianism though the statement may be.
Great taoughts have their fruits in
great deeds; the eighteenth century
was full Of great thoughts that have
come to fruit in the nineteenth.
In all this we have our reckoning to
cast up. We fancy that the emancipa-
ton from much that is sordid or belitt-
ling, if not degrading, is due solely to
the influences Of to-day: rather is it
due, we shall lind, to the action Of to-
day; the influences were started long
ago. The man who walks the streets
to-day, educated, comfortable and at
large liberty in the matter of property,
labor and movement, would never have
been so If the germ of the idea had
not stirred far back in the dark. and
undergoing all the conditions OF
growth, and not to-day come into the
open hight. If in her heart the woman
of the eighteenth century had not
rebelled against ignorance. against the
withholding of her property from her.
against being held under compulsion
as piece of property herself, against
many of the iniustices and inequalities
to which, very largely through want OF
observation and thought, she was then
subjected, the woman of the nineteenth
century would still be where her
predecessor was when the first idea OF
discomfort demonstrated within her
that discomfort that grew to open re-
bellion. and received it's reward long
after she who first held twas dust and
ashes.
We are all Of us greatly IN the habit
of looking down from our scornful
height of to-day upon the past as
something buried in mists Of igno-
rance, and sIothful with want Of eff
fort. II might better become us to
think of what the past has done for us,
step by step and day after day. till all
that it had not we have in full meas
ure. The same habit leads us to de-
spise even our own past as individuals.
as IL never till now had we attained
wisdom, forgetting all about the fact
that the despising individual has no
more claim upon the desirable future
than it has upon this valued present or
the disdaincd past
We are not OF those who in their
scorn, or affected scorn, OF the present
usually only q dissatisfaction with
the duties brought to them by the
present--make fetch Of the past and
fall down and worship it. But II seems
to us that the present will be only the
nobler for regarding the claims to re-
spect belonging TO the past, will be the