Tazewell Republican. [volume] (Tazewell, Va.) 1892-1919, 1901-01-10
IGNATlUS D0NNEllY.
Philadelphia Press.

Philadelphia Press.
Mr.. Ignatius Donnelly, whose death is
announced, represented type OF mind
familiar in all periods of intellectual actiyl'
ty in that he had no appreciation OF the
actual relations of fact. He was not dis
honest but wholly unsound thinker. lie
was not in advance of his age, he was not
right and the world wrong, he was not one
who will be acclaimed by posterlty, but
man who had remarkable gifts as special
pleader in causes that were absolutely
without any substance or actually. His
political vagaries were but the natural out
come of social, scientific and literary vaga-
ries that preceded them, in the advocacy
of all of which he was very much III earn
est, hopelessly sincere; for sincerity, when
it attaches to such things as proving that
the sun is made of green cheese, ceases to
be virtue and is very akin to disease.
And the author of atlantis" "Ragna-
rok," 1.-The Cryptogram" ever had in
hand some ''moonis-made-o fgreen' cheese
problem" which consumed his energies
and ate into his substance.
In other words, 1gnatius Donnelly pre-
scented the phenomenon of thinker
in scientific age who seemingly used
the exact methods of scientific re-
search to establish absurdties. As a mat
ter of fact, Donnel!y had no more idea of
laboratory methods, of the basic conditions
by which science advances knowledge,
than a citizen of his own atlantis" or
than those who survived the impact of the
comets tail in ''Ragnarok." In Gallant
is he presented an array of alleged evil
dence as to the existence of lost CONT
nent that was irresistible, but in its main
intention was little better than balderdash.
In "Ragnarok" he rejected the simple,
everyday facts as to the existence OF an ice
age, and instead advanced a chidlike and
bland theory that all the geological phe-
nomena attributed to the action of glaciers
was really due to comets tail trailing
over the earth, the Chicago fire also being
due subsequently to can excess of gas
from the tail of Biela's comet" which
made things too hot for northern Illinois
on that fatal occasion of 1871.
1t is needless to follow Donnelly into the
forest OF mysteries that surrounds the de-
voices of the Bacon Shakespeare contro.
versy, since that way lies madness. His
great cipher was monumental atsurdity.
But it was no more absurd than the other
scientific lucubrations of the Usage of Min
niger" and with the other works was
harmless as compared with his Populistic
theories. As is so often the case with Wis
ionaries, Mr.. Donnelly sustained the usual
relations of life in an admirable manner
He believed in universal education, and
yet his own career was an example of the
failure of training to minister to a mind
with kink in it, just as the excessive
popularity of his most extraordinary books
proves how many there are to whom the
fairy tales Of bogus science are preferable
to the actual marvels of fact. AS a phil
osopher Donnelly belongs to Swift's "La.
puta." His career is an example and
warning, though the general futility is not
without encouragement for those who re-
alize what menace lies in unsound think
imp I'd ocated wi h zealots enthusiasm.