San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1897-10-31

1
/ tendency to decay and so prolong life.
Not that alone, but so prolong it that
all Of the natural powers may be in
the best possible exercise down to the
latest hour Of mortal being. To know
this is wisdom. Wisdom is salvation.
But of life's unnatural wastage,
how great the sum. Read the annals
of the poor. Pore over the pages of
the criminal records OF this and other
lands. Study the statistics of fatali-
| ties. Familiarfze yourself with all the
daily chapter Of accidents. Note the
destructiaon of human life by war and
pestilence and famine. How the floods
destroy and the fires consume and the
angry seas swallow up their countless
thousands as the ages grow. How
even in the most peaceful times, under
the sunniest skies, the bolt drops out
of an unclouded heaven and the lives
of the multitudes are a prey to de-
struction. How also, much of this
wastage is the result of a criminal
carelessness, or an ignorance as Grim
nal. All this is open to the common
est observation.
To this add the wastage through act
ual, palpable, reckless disregard of hui
man life. Men flock like senseless
sheep in destructive herds to some par
ticular quarter, regardless of health
or life and the terrible tale of wastage
is increased. This recent Klondike is
one example. This all emphasizes the
fact that human life is held cheap.
Meat is not sold so cheaply in the
shambles as life is held in these out of
the way places of the earth. Human
flesh is not worth so much by the
pound in that Dawson country this
hour as the flesh of an OK or a sheep.
Not that canibalism is practiced there,
but that life is held so cheap that a
man would pay less regard to saving
it than he would to saving his store
of daily meat for his sustenance.
All this is outside of that really
criminal wastage of life that is recog-
nized by the courts of the country.
Read the daily record of crime. Right
at home, here in our own beautiful
city, life is held terribly cheap. So
cheap that men are tried from time
to time upon the charge of violently
taking it away. Courts are convened,
juries empanelled, judges appointed,
counsel paid to convict those guilty of
taking life and see that they are pun
ished for it. These object lessons are
before us all the time. Why is it that
human life is held so criminally
cheap? What is the reason that men
are shot down as ruthlessly as if they
were brutes? Why is il we read so
constantly of the train wrecker and the
dynamite fiend? Who will answer?
Whatever the cause, the real reason
Of it all is that we hold human life
Of little value. Why we so hold it may
not be ready of answer, but that is the
reason. Perhaps it is because we begin
that way. We begin with the life of
the insects, then of the larger vermin,
then with the smaller beasts, then with
the larger. Finally we end with man.
Is ii any wonder that so long as all
other life is held to be the legitimate
sport of human kind, that human life
itself is held a thing of small account?
While men are shooting tigers in Ben
gal and moose in Maine, killing deer
in Montana and doves in Texas, is it
any wonder that life is regarded COM
mon. How is it possible to cultivate \
the disposition to kill and then not ex-
ercise it.
Thus regardless of the lives of the
beasts and the fishes and the fowl and
the rest, is it at all to be wondered at
that we grow regardless of human life
in a short while? The very plentiful
ness of life is an incentive to wastage.
Perhaps it is a wise provision that
life should be thus wasted, lest it |
TEEN beyond the power of Earth to
wise conception of living is not pos
sible without considering this wastage |
that seems so universal a part of the |
very economy of living. 1t is not to |
remedies, but to suggest the |
fact and your relation to 1t that the /
subject is presented for your consider |
alton. There is a great lesson to be |
learned in this field, and for this is
the subject brought to notice.
This wastage of life outside of us is |
only matched, possibly oveTborne, by |
the wastage within. There is a vast
age of every force of being from the /
cradle to the grave. This is newt
able in part, and in so far as newt
lblC 10 tAC uSdDlt. Dul lLt UNNECESSARY
waStage of all that force who can esti-
mate that? Wastage through lack of |
acquaintance with the laws that make
For sOundness of mind and body and
lffectional nature as well. The vast
age Of body in useless pursuits, the
of mind in unimproved Oppor-
-untties growing mighty through years
If ignorance, the wastage of the effec-
-iOnal nature on that which is worth |
less. The conservation of the forces |
Of life is the wisdom of living, and yet |
the law is wastage, not conservation.
These pains and aches, these un- |
sound teeth and these broken down |
nerves, these binding headaches and |
these internal agOnies, all the result |
Of broken laws, life's wastage by their |
iisobedience, how they curse us and |
waste our very strength and sap of |
life. What they do in us they do in |
the coming generation, perpetuated |
by transmission of the defects and ten |
denotes in us. Thus it is that the sins |
Of the fathers are visited upon their |
children, and the sins of the mothers |
to their pOsterity to the third and |