Daily inter mountain. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1881-1901, 1899-09-07
PERN/ci0US THOUGHTS AND CRIME.

~ W. VI oiiIAO StS 1SSAAStS y
two Chicago young men to murder a
helpless companion in his sick room. A
love affair is believed to have been be-
hind the crime. and the power of sugges-
ton in the pernicious pages of blood
curdling literature made possible the
wreaking of a terrible vengeance. Many
crimes are traceable to the thoughts and
ambitions inspired by bad books. and
the murder of the college student in Chi
cago is but a fresh illustration Of their
evil tendencies.
Such crimes ought to awaken the world
to the necessity of right thinking. Mod
ern education does not commence at the
right point in dealing with the mental ca
p~acities of the child. 1t would teach him
to avoid temptation, lest he be overcome
by it, when, in fact, it ought to impress
upon him that the natural powers of re-
sistance within the mind are superior to
any temptation that may be encountered
in life, provided that power is developed
through right thinking. The keynote to
all that a man may be, or may hope to
become, is correct methods of thought.
When the wide world learns to respect
the tangibility of thought, and realizes
that natural law places to the credit or
discredit of man the ideas that function
within his brain. children will be taught
to avoid evil thoughts as they would the
evil itself-to shrink from bad thinking
as they would from the plague. Every
thought, be it good, bad or Indifferent,
registers itself upon the life of the indi-
Nidual for better or worse, and the ag-
gregate thought becomes the measure of
the man. Teach the individual control
Of thought and temptation ceases to be
temptation, for an opportunity to COM
nit a crime does not suegest the crime
unless the mind is open to the force of
suggestion and welcomes the evil thought
to a place of honor before the altar of the
God-given intellect of man.
Sermons against pernicious literature
may be preached till doomsday, and dime
novels will continue to exist. The evils
OF the drink habit may be rallied at, but
they will still live. Every temptation
calculated to corrupt the heart and de-
morallze the man will flourish with more
or less vigor While it finds a field for
fruitful employment in the unframed in
tellacts of the young.. Until the child is
taught his accountability for the
thoughts that are permitted to enter his
brain and shape his character, and that
to think an evil is to perpetrate against
nature that which the doing of the evil
would be against the well being of So
Getty and the provisions of the law, the
effort to destroy temptation will be in
vain.
me great poet wrote more wisely than
he knaw When he said: There's nothing
either good or bad but thinking makes
1t So" The crimes growing out of the
avariclous tendencies of the mind are
que to the character of the thoughts that
are permitted to desecrate that holy
tabernacle of the intellect--the brain of
man. This IS likewise true of every TYNE
OF temptation that may assail the indi-
vidual IN his brief pilgrimage from the
cradle t" the grave.
The Pigment of the IMAGINATION which
eneobles murder, and throws a halo of
glory around the reaping of ones VEN
Eeance against another. on the pages of
the dime novel, would have had no effect
hEon the young assassins in Chicago had
they been taught the value of Thought
control, and that the suggestions of con-
duct houid come from within rather
than from without. Some time mankind
Will learn the lessons of experience. and
gather from the crimes of each succeed
ing day the philosophy of teaching the
Young that il is just as necessary to think
aflght as to act a~right-that a world or
truth is written in the scriptural adaae.
AS a man thinketh SO is he"