The record-union., 1896-08-09
SOME RAMBLING THOUGHTS.
BY MEMO.
(Copyright

tfenned by a layman in the SPARE mo.
ments OF busy career and dedicated to
petter understanding OF life and its
varied opportunities
be neither a tree nor wave in your
mental makeup. A tree stands. rooted
fast to one spot;e wave is driven
blther and thither by every wind that
ploWs. But in your judgment of things
| be man, free to move at will. from
place to place, and well able, also. if
necessary, to brace yourself against
the f1ercest efforts of very tempest of
argument. A tree, with It's limited
knowledge of this vast world is the
very counterpart of some of us: we ac-
qulre smattering OF a few subjects.
ana the very littleness of our knoWl-
edge makes US mad enough to think
we know all that we should know. We
somehow, perhaps from conceit. for
surely it is species of narrow-gauge
conceit that will bar out new ideas,
think 1t a shameful thing to change
our opinions We cling with all the
ramified rootlets of prejudice to one
little spot and progress is not for us:
the healthful gales of discussion pass
US by and we are not moved.
Be strong man to defend the castle
OF your opinion, and be also a wise one
wise enough to know when to CAN'T
ulate to stronger than yourself. The
r,ght side OF O. question in one genera
ton, may be quite the wrong one in a
later, better informed age. If. there
fore, you still worship the day of little
knowledge you are out of date. YOU
are shelved, you are a Chinaman. This
queue-wearlng, parchment-skinned
Asiatic Is content with the few or
many, but necessarily antiquated
things Of his ancestors; and he is not
alone, for there are Caucasians right in
your neighborhood who resist with
dumb stubbornness all argument all
advancement You may draw together
the curtains of your mind and say it
is as dark without as it is within: you
may close your ears to the hurrying
feet of progress and say that every
thing is as motionless as you are, but
the only deluded one is -alf.
THE world moves desperately and
under his breath said poor, weak, re-
canting old Galilee, as he turned his
back on a crowd of ecclesiastical sim
ners, who loved darkness rather than
light. Those conceit stuffed effigies
of men laughed him to scorn, and we
now hold them in derisfon. New facts
will force themselves into recognition
and opposition to them will be as the
sand heaps piled up by children to stay
the progress of the sea. You no longer
confine yourself to a dreary, dripping
tallow candle, when a turn Of the hand
floods your apartment with electric
light. You no longer deny yourself the
succulent tomato because an earlier
generation named it love apple" and
dubbed it poisonous"
Would you stand head and shoulders
above the small men who echo the
dead? Then be broad minded enough
to be inconsistent with your past. No
knowledge that you have had on great
subjects has ever been final. Recognize
that and you will continue to grow.
Somewhere I have read, the place I
cannot now recall, that Dead men and
fools never change their opinions.
You are alive in moving times be not
then as If you were dead. In religion,
in science, in education, and, especially
at this moment, in politics, a constant
readjustment Of our opinions is neces-
sary If we would be in the world and of
it, in its forward swing