San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1897-06-20
A FUNNY MAN.

1Hdl WHdt he 10. WIN
What man? All men. Man himself is
funny. The poets and the sages and
the philosophers all seem to have
thought so. Their definitions attest
this. One says that he is an animal
that goes on four legs in the morning,
on two legs at noon and on three legs
at night. Another says-man's a va
por full Of woes. he cuts a caper and
away he goes. One says that the
greatest study of mankind is man, and
so on to the end of the human chapter.
Man is undoubtedly the most compos-
lite animal of which we have knowl-
edge, and perhaps it is not untrue to
say that he is the highest. Until we
so master the language of the other
animals as to understand them we will
leave this an open question.
But man Is funny. He is probably
the youngest son, the latest heir, the
last creation. The world was hoary
with ages Of antiquity before there
was left upon any sand of any shore
the mark of human footprints, and yet
man assumes to be the lord and master
of a world into which he comes late
and upon whose free bounty he has
subsisted ever since. Man is the beg
gar of the ages. He is the pirate of
the great sea of life. The buccaneer
of the ocean of existence. The vandal
of the historic periods. He exists by
preying upon all that is below him,
and fawning upon all that is above
him. He levies tribute on all things
and pays taxes on nothing except him
self and his vices. Queer fellow.
Man presumes to own the world, the
earth he calls his and the fullness
thereof. He pre-empts his claims to
everything that there is in sight and
disputes the right even Of the children
of the field and the forest to the native
sustenance that was theirs ages be-
fore such a -pafiy thing as man was
ever thought of. He is in and of him.
self the most helpless of all created
things of his own size, and yet he has
succeeded in putting his brand on ev-
cry huge carcass that peoples the for
est or rises to the surface of the vastly
deep. He slaughters for the love Of it
and regards no life worth a thought
unless it is his own. Earth was an
Eden when he made his appearance.
1t is now a butchers pen.
Man has done not one solitary thing
to help the world, to help its condition
or its life, outside of himself. Outside
of himself he does not consider that
there is anything else TO consider. To
himself he is creations self. For him
all things exist and continue to be. He
mas laid his hand on nothing that be
has rot marred. He has brought suf-
ferirg in his train wherever he has
moved The whole sentient creation
suffers because he is. Thcre is not a
beast or a bird or a fish or 6. fowl that
he has let live in peace, and the hand
that has been fed so lavishly by every
thing has only been the more vigor-
otsly stretched out TO destroy. HIS
uestructiveness is only equalled by his
ignorance.
Assuming to himself all knowledge
he achieves only ignorance After ag-
es of being he is only beginning to
understand his own language Only
very small part of the world has any
knowledge of what the great rest Of
the world means when it speaks. Lam
guages are still as varied as the myriad
tongued creation of birds and beasts
and fishes and reptiles. He knows less
of what his fellows mean when they
speak than the beasts he despises.
After long ages of speculation he has
no knowledge of his whence or his
whittier. Ages past are dumb as to
the one; ages to come have not spoken
as to the other. Each race, or division
Of a race has it's traditions concerning
these things. but knowledge there is
none.
Only one thing has man done, and
that is to superfiscally acquaint HIM
self with the forces of nature and har-
ness them to his own uses. He has on
ly done this because he was forced to
it by his own self interest. He has
done nothing under the sun that his
self-interest has not forced him to do.
Even in this one attainment he is still
far from possessing the knowledge
that the so-called inferior creation pos
sess. Birds and beasts, even the most
stupid Of all, can give him points as
To- all atmospheric phenomena. A
4 fommon every day pig can tell more
correctly concerning a storm than all
his own boosted science A homing
/ pigeon can knock him out Of time in
steering a straight course, even il he
d has a compass.
All this may be more mans misfor-
tune than his fault, the eject ct his
natural and necessary limitations. It
is not that he Is weak and puny, and