The Mason County journal. [volume] (Shelton, W.T.) 1886-1927, 1890-04-18
THE PATENT OFFICE.
Americas Iconoclastic Forces Housed in
Grecian TemDle.

americas Iconoclastic Forces Housed I'm .
Grecian Temple.
It is singularly suggestive fact that
the Patent Office building, one of the
most beautiful structures in this or any
other country, is, in the main, a repro
ductiOn of the architecture of ancient
Greece. 1t is almost paradoxical that
the inventive genius of this young and
vigorous Nation, genius that has borne
its part in revolutionizing the arts ana
industries of the world, is thus visibly
linked to the remote past; that the sys-
tenn which has placed our country in the
van of the march of progress, a system
that is necessarily icOnoclastic; a sys-
tenn that cares not for what was, but
looks only to that which is to be: a sys-
tenn that makes aggressive warfare on
the past and contemns the present, while
itpays its devotion to the future, is housed
in an edifice that was virtually conceived
in brains that moldered back to kindred
dust three thousand years ago. 1t is
consolation to pessimists-an they
never tire of parading the fact-that in
some respects the ancients were superior
to the people of our day. We may as
we'll concede that in architecture, sculpt-
ure, and poetry the Greeks have not
been surpassed by nations of modern
times. But this concession covers ONLY
small space in the boundless field of
,uman effort Within the Enclosure of
hose Grecian walls that house oul
'atent system are wonders thaj seem to
'elong to different world and to
higher order of beings than the world
md the men for whom Homer sang.
The ancients knew but few arts. The
most aff1uent citizens of old Athens
we're surrounded by fewer accessories of
Easy existence than are at the
command of the day-laborer of
our time. We copy some of the
beautiful forms of Grecian architecture,
but we add to our buildings the results
of ages of scientific progress. In heat
ing, lighting, draining, ventilation, the
elevator and thousand devices that
promote comfort and enhance beauty,
re have made more progress in the
resent century than was achieved in
all preceding ages. The ancients of all
nations had few and simple means of
travelling by land or sea. Modern in
vention-invention largely due to the
stimulus of our patent system-has
brought the ends of the world together
and made neighbors of nations separated
by oceans. Except his own immortal
poem and few suggestions of the art
and architecture of his time, there is
nothing on this continent that Homer,
resurrected and transported here, would
recognize as belonging to the world in
which he lived. The steamships, rail
ways, telegraphs, telephones, electric
motors, printing-machines, factories,
and, indeed, all that we use, all
that we enjoy, on land or sea, in
peace or war, in our homes, in our places
OF business, on our farms, in our mines,
or wherever we toll or rest-all, all is
new, all belongs to the new world
The inventions of recent years have so
changed the world that the man of
thirty is older than Methuselah-older
in that he has seen more, experienced
more than the oldest of all the ancients.
We do not suppose the architect of the
Patent Office building intended an
anachronism or a paradox, but it was
a strangely-suggestive conceit to house
the iconoclastic forces of America in
Grecian temple-Inyentiye Ace