The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1901-08-11

What They Are and How They Nay
be Elevated Morally.

need not shock the most timld modesty,
is the fact, known and admitted by all
wen-informed physicians, demon
strated and advocated BY ali eminent
anatomists for hundreds of years, that
men and women are animals related by
many ties of kinship to a long, long
line of animal life said to be below
theu,
This being the case, no consultation
of the competent, as TO how the so
called social evil shall be overcome, viii
result in good that does not start from
the conceded fact that men and women
are animals, belonging to and developed I
from the animal life that peOpled the
earth. so to speak, for probably mill
lions OF years before mankind reached |
! the upright position, with feet on the
soil and head toward the stars above
him. So considered, the question is
How shall we overcome the appetites
and passions that work together for
the downfall OF our yOupg men and
women? That starts another question
What is the cause of this evil2
As have intimated in the statement
that we are animals, the cause is N
part an inheritance. 1t is in part. also,
due to customs acquired long before
| morals had reached even their present
level. In a state of nature or savagery,
man did as he pleased with woman by
violence By and by, when woman had
acquired a kind of independence man
had to buy her. This process produced
the harlOt or courtezan who became
powerful in political, social and even
religious matters. The founder of
Buddhism, the greatest body OF de
voices existing, is said to have declined
| the honors of great city because lie
had already accepted the hospitality of
its most famous cOurtezan. The fOun-
der OF our Christian religion, if the ac-
| cepted gospels do him no wrong had
women of the same class among his in
/ innate companions, and his treatment
OF the person taken in adultery shows
him wise enough to understand that the
/ passions were an inheritance from him
self, as Creator, and only those who
had not INDUCED them could cast
stones at-the weak one. Today we find
/ IN civilization tendency, never, in
| fact, wholly OUtgrOwn, to revert to the
savage methods of dealing with unpro-
| tected Women-a perversiOn Of civiliza-
1 tioD.
1 believe this evil clings to society
! largely through a mistaken sense of
= duty to God in religious training of the
/ young, and I shall refer to Utah in il
| lustratiOn Of my meaning. We have
/ had here for half a century a growing
/ sect that was professedIy a new relig-
4 iouS cult, denounced and opposed by
} all other 5ects, and practically all who
/ were OF no sect, as Un-Christian. ire
! uglous. beastly and vile. Opposition
/ lnUenSifieS belief and creates bigOtrv
| These opposing religious bodies all be
/ came more rigid in their devotion 10
/ doctrine than they would have been
/ without the local hatred. Each saw IN
/ the other an enemy against whom it
/ must guard it's young. There must be
/ no conversions from either side. The re-
suit was religious training more per-
] Slstent and rigorous than has been
| seen IN this country since Puritanism
J ruled New England 300 years ago. It
/ was long an adage that minister's sons
] of al of ha
/ their fathers were bad but because
/ they were so rigid with their boys that
| when they obtained freedom they went
Wild, as calves do when released from
confinement in the stall.
In Utah we have a similar result
The young have been crammed with
religious instruction much as people
sometimes fatten turkeys-by forcing
| the food into their threats and COM
peiling them TO swallow it or choke.
when the natural appetite was already
surfeited. The difference is that when
the bird was fat he was killed. but
| when the boy or girl was supposed To
be in perfect condition they fretted il
1 an away in a fever of cOnstraint and at
last broke loose and perhaps killed
themselves in the delirium Of their
| freedom.
Another thought presents itself Sec
ular education and the thousand in6u-
enceS Of modern life brought here in the
vast changes in the younger generation
AS they have done all over the nation
Today latent skepticism exists
throughout Christendom toward reIig-
ious doctrines that few dared to ques-
| ton nfty years ago. and this is equally
true among the devotees of the sect
that has so long given Utah not al
ways pleasant nOtOriety. The point is
herein mental development along sec
ular lines we have grown rapidIy while
md
have made little or no progress what
/ ever This is true Of all sects and it
! is because we lay down a revelation
call IL the word and viii of God and
hold ourselves and children rigidIy to
IL, forgetting the very important fact
that mental development in other direc-
lions inevitably throws the revelation
into the shade, excites suspicion of its
validity and finally rejects it as 8 fic-
tior.
For this result our religious teachers.
in my opinion, are to blame They
have taken upon themselves the care
/ of humanity in the name of God but
they assumed that God wanted tho
work done according to rules laid down
/ 1000 or seventy years ago for the guild
ance of people living then. They have
lost sight of the TACT that progress is
fully as much the law of God as saliva
ton can be the viii Of God. They
have exerted themselves faithfully and
M.
and young, for a life that is to come.
But we can have only one life at a
time, and the one we have is here with
us every day and highland it is this
one God wants US fitted for first. nat
uraliy, since he is an allwise Father.
The Wildness, dissOluteness and worse
of our young people are, therefore, the
result of unwise efforts to force them
to ignore the present and live in the
past IN order to secure a reward in the
future-after they are dead
Time was, not SO long ago, when the
ology held the Christian world through
fear The future was a horror that re-
strained the passionate by its terrOrs.
Today men, women and even children
look upon that punitive theology as
blasphemy they laugh at future tor
ments and sheer at religion because
they have acquired a wrong conception
of it. Those of them who keep alive
the social evil have fallen below their
churches. Others have grown up
through and out of them and walk the
world in self-control communing with
the Infinite and finding the true. the
beautiful and the good as they never
could do while forced to search for
dead past
What is TO be done to overcome the
evil complained Off Breed the race up
into broad and strong morality that
viii hold the passions in control There
is no other way, and as it will take
! thousands of years to accomplish it the
times make new duties, new. conditions,
I = NJ ,