Ellsworth American. [volume] (Ellsworth, Me.) 1855-current, 1904-12-21

dissectlng Of oneself, like o piece Of
mechanism. 1t is waste of time and
goes wide of the mark. The man who,
to prepare himself the better for walk
ing, should begin by making a rigid
anatomical examination of his means
Of locomotion would risk dislocating
something before he had taken a step.
You have what you need to walk with
then forward Take care not to fall
and use your forces with discretion
Potterers and seruple mongers are soon
reduced to inaction. 1t needs but a
gllmmer of common sense to perceive
that man is not made to pass his life
in self centered trance.
And common sense-do you not find
what is designated by this name be-
coming as rare as the common sense
customs of ether days? Common sense
has become an old story. We must
have something new, and we create
q Fictitious existence, a refinement of
living, that the vulgar crowd has not
the wherewithal to procure. 1t is so
agreeable to be distinguished! Instead
of conducting ourselves like rational
beings and using the means most OBJ
ylously at our command we arrive, by
dint of absolute genius, at the most
astonishing singularities. Better of
the track than ON the main line! All
the bodily defects and deformities that
orthopedy treats give but feeble idea
of the humps, the tortuosities, the dis
locations we have inflicted upon our
selves in order to depart from simple
common sense, and at our own ex-
pense we learn that one does not de-
form himself with impunity. Novelty,
after ALL is ephemeral. Nothing en-
dures but the eternal commonplace,
and If one departs from that 1t is to
run the most perilous risks. Happy
he who is able to reclaim himself, who
finds the way back to simplicity.
Good plain sense is not, as is often
imagined, the innate possession of the
first chance conner, mean and paltry
equipment that has cost nothing to
any one. l would compare it to those
old folk songs. unfathered, but death
less, which seem to have risen out of
the very heart of the people. Good
sense is fund slowly and painfully
accumulated by the labor of centuries.
1t is jewel of the first water, whose
value he alone understands who has
lost 1t or who observes the lives of
others who have lost it. For my part
think no price too great to pay for
gaining it and keeping it for the pos
session Of eyes that see and judg-
ment that discerns. One takes good
care Of his sword that 1t be not bent
or rusted; with greater reason should
he give heed to his thought.
But let this be well understood: An
appeal to common sense is not an ap-
peal to thought that grovels, to narrow
positivism which denies everything 1t
cannot see or touch; for to wish that
man should be absorbed in material
sensations, to the exclusion of the high
realities Of the inner life, Is also want
of good sense Here we touch upon a
tender point. round which the greatest
battles of humanity are waging. In
truth, we are striving to attain con-
ception of life, searching it out amid
countless obscurities and griefs, and
everything that touches upon spiritual
realities becomes day by day moro
painful. In the midst of the grave
perplexities and transient disorders
that accompany great crises of thought
1t seems more difficult than ever to es-
cape with any simple principles. Yet
necessity itself comes to our aid, as it
has done for the men of all times. The
programme of life is terribly simple
after all, and in the fact that existence
so imperiously forces herself upon III
she gives us notice that she precedes
any idea of her which we may make
for ourselves and that no one can put
off living pending an attempt to under
stand life. Our PHILOSOPHERS, our ex-
plantations, our beliefs, are everywhere
confronted by facts, and these facts,
| prodigious, irrefutable, call us to order
when we would deduce life from our
| reasonings and would wait to act until
! we have ended philosophizing. 1t Is
| this happy necessity that prevents the
| world from stopping while man ques-
| lions his route. Travellers of day,
| we are carried along in vast move
ment to which we are called upon to
| contribute, but which we have not fore
seen nor embraced in its entirety nor
| penetrated as to its ultimate aims.
| Our part is to fill faithfully the role of
| private, which has devolved upon us,
and our thought should adapt itself to
| the situation. Do not say that we live
| in more trying times than our ances-
| tors, for things seen from afar are of
ten seen imperfectly. 1t is, moreover,
scarcely gracious to complain of not
having been born in the days Of ones
| grandfather.
What we may believe least contesta-
Bile on the subject is this: From the be-
ginning of the world it has been hard
to see clearly; right thinking has been
difficult everywhere and always. In
| the matter the ancients were in no
wise privileged above the moderns, and