The Anaconda standard. [volume] (Anaconda, Mont.) 1889-1970, 1899-06-25

/
| disposed to rush into print with the cry
of stop thief whenever a writer or
/ speaker who has read, not to steal the
i thoughts of others, but to refresh his
/ own exhausted mind, has unconscious
/ ~ appropriated the thought or Ian
! guage principles or passages of an
1 other.
There is no such thing as originality
| neither in literature nor in ideas. The
+! words of Solomon still stand good:
''There Is no new thing under The sun
1 and are as applicable to-day as when
first uttered, nearly 800 years ago.
| These pregnant words may be used, so
to speak, in a retrospe culative sense,
/ for if by newness is meant an absolute
i initiation of what is strictly original,
1t is certain that there has been moth
ing of the kind since tne first germs
of thought began to bud and blossom
in the prehistoric ages. A germ of
/ thought is like grain of mustard seed
which takes root, grows and spreads
| with a marvellous, prodigal eXuberance.
The intellectual debts from man to
| man have so accumulated and, in their
variety as dissimilar as. begging Inger-
SOILS pardon, the blades of grass or the
leaves of the forest that coming down
the ages, their originality is lost in an
tiquity.
There is not to-day new expression
! in written or spoken language Cur
very speech has sprung from the roots
| of scores of languages now dead and in
/ forgotten graves.
/ All that is most frequently quoted in
litera ture and oratofy has filtered down
| to us from creations morning, when
/ God talked with Adam in The Garden of
Eden To-day we are the heirs OF all
/ the wisdom of our ancestors for sew
| eral hundreds of generations back. The
harvests of research. thouoht and study
| left us by millions of predecessors are
ours to enjoy without stint. Our very
4 mentality to-day derives nutrition from
Moses and the prophets Of the Old Tes-
4 lament. And whether an lngersoll or
! MacCorry for fervidneSs, Subimity and
beauty of expression and respl2ndently
| iridescent allegory, he will familiarize
himself with David, Isaiah jeremiah
and the other sublime characters of the
Old Testament. The philosophy of Pla-
to and Aristotle, the prOfundity of Ba-
con, the genius of Shakespeare and the
myriads of intellectual meteors who,
since printing was invented have bla-
zoned with precious intellectual jewels
the dome of thought, have been freely
given to us as common heritage. The
grand results of their laborious re-
search is ours to use without stint
forever and forever and ever
Prof. David Pryde says: "Thcse who
object to a writer or speaker that he
says nothing absolutely new might as
well object to nature because in her
lusty prodigality she delights in repeat
ing herself and reproduces the same
flowers year after year. Walking in
garden and seeing rose. they might
say L have met with that remark be-
fore The question is not one of
priority, but of truth, not of chronol-
/ ogy, but of successful assimilation and
expression, not whether we have niCe'y
| Disseminated our borrowed thoughts
| w have
, breathed our own convictions into the
thoughts mixed up in our skulls, and
giving them a fresh vitality by giving
them in language that is favored with
our own idiosyncrasy.
The literature of the ancients is an
ocean of plagiarism. The most con-
spicuous instance is Virgins wholesale
n appropriations from Homer. Chaucer,
the father of English poetry, is proven
to have helped himself without stint to
quaint old Latin rhvmes of the early
monks Authors and speakers have not
only drawn on every preceding age and
generation. but on their contemporary
les also. A fact which no one can deny.
Hundreds of passages in Milton's
poems are paraphrases or literal trans
lations of passages in the Greek and
Latin poets, and his English words are
often used in the sense of the classic
words from which they are derived.
His wealth of allusion and diction in
Paradise Lost is the outcome of all
that is best in antecedent poetry In
turn many of our most famous poets
drew on Milton unsparingly. Pope's "Es-
say on Man" has appropriated several
of the most striking lines from Milton,
Dryden and others, just as Milton and
Dryden drew on the ancient classics.
There is not an English poet of any
great fame who has not been indebted
largely to the "Odes of Horace" Our
"A .1ypr inl NNhl, tors.
our Ingersolls and MacCorrys, who al
ready have industriously helped them
selves at the tables of Demosthenes,
Cicero etc, and it will be found thu
banquet supply is ineXhaustible and
orators yet unborn will receive mental
nourshments within their hospitable
doors.
A liberal acquaintance with the clas-
sizes and polite literature is therefore a
necessity to the advancement of all
men who are enlisted in what are called
the learned professions. The more emf
nent any man is in his chosen profess
sion, whether it be the bar, the pulpit.
the press or the stage, the more famil-
lar will you find him with the best lit
erature. Incidentally will YOU also find
in him a most wonderfully retentive
memory. That marvellous genius, the
: German Shakespeare, Goethe, in his
youth 1.-The wonder of the country
round" for the readiness with which he
could memorze whole passa ges from
his favorite authors. Having these
great powers of acquisition, his mind
free to grow in great luyuriance, wan
dering at will over all the fields of lit
erature, what wonder is it that his
| great wealth of thought should in his
genius find expression? locke says:
''That prodigy of parts. Pascal, knew
: the whole Bible by heart. Macauley,
the historian. had perhaps the most re-
markabe memory of his generation. /
have mentioned those few illustrious
names of men who owed perhaps their
great eminence to the uses they mad 2
of that prodigious faculty.
The great painter, Sir Joshua Rey-
nods, in his discourses, says: Genius
may anticipate the season of maturity,
| but in the education of a people, as in
!; that of an individual, memory must be
exercised before the powers of reason