Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1898-07-15

"A Soou pliySlCat constitution Is eilll-
nently desirable; extensive mental
requirements are also to be diligently
attained ST. far as we are able; but Il
sound moral constitution will do more
for the real happiness and welfare of
the individual than anything else
The greatest strength and the most
brilliant talents, if misdirccted, shine
with but feeble lustre when COM
pared with the sublimity OF q high
moral nature.
We hear much of athletics and the
higher education. Both are good, but
neither is the highest. The truly
higher education is not to be found in
any scholastic curriculum, but resides
Immediately in our home, and circle
OF acquaintance, and more remotely
in our general environment. But
while physical and mental education
have their gymnasia, schools and col
leges, in abundance, moral education
is left pretty much to shift for itself.
We put the cart before the horse and
expect both to go on straight and mer-
rily! We subordinate the higher to the
lower, and are surprised if the higher
do not rule!
Let men say what they will, but no
one is free agent. Each is first re-
stricted by the eternal laws of nature,
and next is modified by ever varying
circumstances. Environment fashions
us whether we will or not; environ
ment controls our will, forms our sen
timents, gives us our speech, our NOR
ality and our religion, clothes and ed
ucates us, and shapes our destiny.
Predestination is not required for these
things; environment is all-sufiicient.
This view, which is surely a correct
one, should 60 far to destroy many
errors, one of which is that all delin-
quency must be punished. We might
90 farther and question if any punish
ment is useful, and whether it does
not do more harm than good. What
our criminals and ne'er-do-wells of the
community want is not punishment,
but pity; and that not the idiotic or
sentimental pity which pets and cod
dies them, and does more for them
than for honest people, but the pity
which is resolute for their reformation
or their Observation-Disclosures if it
can be attained, extinction if it cam
not. We expect all our citizens to be
well-conducted and honest. But what
sort of an environment surrounds the
greater part of them? Is it conducive
to manliness in the men or modesty
in the women? Or is it too often
circle OF vice and debauchery? Our
slums reek with physical and moral
filth, our streets are at the mercy of
drunken and foul-mouthed ruffians
and abandoned women, who perambu-
late them at pleasure and hustle virtue
from the payment. Shall we fog
them at the carts tail, as of old, or re-
form them? We cannot resume obso-
lete punishments, but how can they
be reformed? BY a change of environ
ment; by Withdrawing them from
their old haunts and compelling them
to earn an honest living in specially
arranged homes and in a moral atmo.
sphere. We have in this country
vast number of notoriously immoral
persons, on the other hand we have
great many intelligent and charitably
disposed people with nothing to do
Here are the two forces which should
come together, the vicious and the re-
formative. Paid agents would be USE
less for this remedial work, for unless
done from spirit OF pure charity it
could never succeed. But gentle men
and women urged by the divine i'm
pulses OF the good monks and nuns of
old days, could wean back many an
evil and stubborn nature to the paths
of decency and rectitude, and do what
prisons and paid chaplains could never
accomplish. At present things are
going altogether wrong. The social
evil is increasing; so are insanity and
legal offences. Respect on the part of
the young for age, for goodness, for
the sex, and for their superiors, is de.
creasing, and threatens to disappear
altogether. The board schools turn
their pupils out with enough of super
fetal knowledge to make them con-
ceited and saucy, but with the mini
mum of moral training. We need new
environments, or rather purifying of
the present ones, and these can be
gained only by general and systematic
effort on the part of all concerned, and
by parental and patriotic determine
ton to eliminate or suppress, at any
cost, the rapidly increasing incentives
to evil.
WHILE prospecting for mineral in
the mountains back of Port Ludlow,
Sam'l. Craig made a discovery which
is attracting considerable attention
among mining men. The ledge or
formation is cement, thoroughly i'm
pregnated with rubies, varying in size
from pinhead to a buckshot. The
cement, when exposed to air, becomes
soft and is easily crushed.
ANOTHER colony of Russians arrived
at Ritzville, Friday.