The Columbian. [volume] (Bloomsburg, Pa.) 1866-1910, 1896-02-06
LIVE QUESTIONS.
A Serves cf Articles Contributed TO These
Columns by Advanced Thinkers.
NUMBER I.-SEEK THE TRUTH.


"New occasions teach new duties
Time makes ancient good uncouth;
They must upward still and onward
Who would keep abreast Of truth"
All history teaches that the doctrine,
Whatever is, is right, :" is so far from
being true that in methods and opinions
the direct contrary may be said to be
much nearer the truth. Washington 8
life was shortened by faith in bleeding
as panacea. The generally accepted
prejudice that denied water to the
parched lips of fever patient-what un-
told suffering it brought upon our fore
fathers All races in certain stages Of
their progress have peopled the invisi-
bic world with gods who were the
magnified images of themselves, with
all the vices and passions of primitive
man intensified. Any one who question
ed the exact truth of this mass of imag-
ination and tradition was banished or
put to death. 1t was very mild con-
travention of the accepted religious be-
liefs of his time that brought the cup of
hemlocks to the lips of the wisest and
best Of the heather philosophers. The
Christian martyrs were succeeded by
martyrs to Christianity. st. Stephen
and John Huss were alike victims to
opinions that nobody now holds. So
were Joan of Arc and the Salem witches.
Prior to the time Of Copernicus it was
the general belief that the earth was
fiat and immovable, and numerous were
the theories advanced by learned men
to account for phenomena that every
child now understands The true expla-
nation aElounced by Copernicus and
Galileo was condemned by the holy
office as "absurd in philosophy and
formally heretical because directly con-
trary to the Holy Scriptures. Galileo
was forced to recant, and the name of
Copernicus remained anathema for three
centuries. The divine right of kings
was once universally accepted, and in
our own time Lovejoy lost his life in
Alton, and Garrison and Phillips risked
theirs in Boston for daring to question
the right of man to enslave his fellow
man.
The geological conclusions of Sir
Charles Lyell in the nineteenth century
were condemned by the church, as were
the astronomical theories of Galileo in
the seventeenth. Franklin's discovery
of the identity Of lightning and cleo
tricity was ridiculed by the Englis sci
entists of that day. Stephenson was
laughed at when he asserted that his
locomotive could draw train at the
rate of 20 miles an hour. We all know
now that Galileo and Lyell, Franklin
and Stephenson were right, and the rest
of the world was wrong. But we go on
just the same condemning or refusing
hearing to the Lyells and Galileos. the
Loyejoys and Garrisons of today. Like
all our forefathers, we are sure that our
creeds and theories represent the abso-
lutte and entire truth.
AS Bagehot says, "There is no pain
so great as the pain of new idea, ="
and therefore the world shrinks from
new idea as child shrinks from the
surgeons knife. Every proposal to
change the established order is now, as
heretofore, condemned, often without a
hearing, as fatal to the family, destruc-
tive of religion or subversive of society.
We now accept the doctrine that all
men, of whatever color, are born free
and endowed with certain inalienable
rights as expressed in our Declaration
of Independence. But for the most part
we are satisfied with the mere declara-
tiOn that all men are equally entitled to
life, liberty and the pursuit of happi-
ness and are impatient Of any inquiry
as to whether our present political and
social organization really secures this
right equally to all men. In this country
we have not since the Revolution doubt
ed the truth of Jefferson g dictum that
"a government derives its just powers
from the consent of the governed" but
in 1882 proposal to grant to English
men their plain political rights was re-
garded by the conservatives as threaten
ing the safety Of the kingdom and the
continuance Of social order. Macaulay's
arguments ia favor Of the reform bill
apply with equal force to the conditions
Of today, and the following from the
pen of the famous DR.. Arnold of Rugby
embodies truth of universal applica-
tion. Advocating the passage of the re-
form bill, he said: Zone would think
that people who talk against change
were literally as well as metaphorically
blind and really did not see that every
thing in themselves and around them is
changing every hour by the necessary
laws of its being. There is moth
ing so revolutionary, because there is
nothing so unnatural and so convulsive
to society, as the strain to keep things
fixed, when all the world is, by the
very law of its creation, in eternal prog
ress, and the cause of all the evils of
the world may be traced to that natural
but most deadly error of human indo-
lence and corruption-thato our business
is to preserve aud not to improve -
1t does not by any means follow that