The silver messenger. (Challis, Idaho) 1890-1912, 1902-12-16
RANDOM THOUGHTS.

have loved and lost than never
to have loved at al" is made to
apply in comforting sense to
many of the awkward and dis
appointing things of life. 1t is
better to have as perpetual
treasure the blessed memory of
human affection than to be ignor
ant of what such a memory can
do in inspiring effort and duty.
Sometimes we apply the truth of
this proverb widely. 1t is not
better to have loved purpose in
life and lost it, than to have had
no purpose at all. To have and
to lose is worse than never to
have had; for never to have
means ignorance; to have had
and to have lost may mean des
pair. 1t is as though we would
say, it is better to have been able
to see and then to have become
blind, than to have been born
blind. Born blind, we never
know through the sense of sight
the beauties and glories that we
miss; seeing and then smitten
with blindness, we look no more
upon the beauty that we once
loved and that once thrilled us.
To have had the purpose to keep
moving with the majestic stream
of forward moving creatures
from the beginning of asperation
until now, and then to have been
swung aside into swirling eddy
of self-gratifcation or self-will,
there to revolve around nothing
that is progressive, is worse than
never to have swung out into the
great inspiring stream of effort
that makes thousands of us feel
that life is really worth while.
Strange paradox, that he who most doth give,
Hath ever more and doth more largely live;
Yet so the spring, that doth most freely flow,
Be-fowers the fields, and still doth fuller
grow
The dreadful aspect Of a lost
ideal is that it puts us out of step
with the rest of the world. The
world as a comfortable habita-
ton for man was not ready made,
but is still in the making. The
making of it has been the work
of human hearts and human
hopes. Therefore, those who
cease to idealize the life that is
given into their hands as a treas
ure are separate from the rest of
the toiling world; their hearts do
not beat with it, their hopes do
not rise with it, they really have
no place in it, The path of man
has been a path of sacrifice.
Nothing ever good was attained
without it, nothing ever will be,
Those who step aside and will
not sacrifice themselves in any
way for anyone on any grounds
are worse than those who have
never know any light. Like the
blind fish of the deepest ocean
depth, they need no eyes because
there is nothing that they can
see around them. 1t is this very
horrible sense of seeing a vision
of what our lives ought TO be or
what we could do with them, and
then losing that vision, that
causes men to despair, as it were,
to throw up the sponge" in
suicide.
Take another view of it. The
independence of all upon each
and each upon all, making our
civilization what it is, is a iudg-
ment upon those who lose their
ideals. Idealization never brings
its full benefits to the one who
holds ideals; its full benefits are
to those around him or who come
after him. Man is not a parasite
that he should simply claim from
the body of humanity a gift
Man is giver as well as a get.
ter. If he gives not, he ceases
to be man. We think it un
natural for son to cease looking
after his mother no matter how
personally distressing to him the
manners or the views or the be