Oxford Democrat. [volume] (Paris, Me.) 1833-1933, 1904-11-22
Johns Letter.

We have lately resumed our reading
from the Zadoc Long Free Library. We
are now drinking in 1.-THE Immortal
Life" by John Weiss. IT'S packed with
good things and is food for thought.
In his chapter on The Survival of the
Fittest he has this to say:
"Goethe said: Man is the first dia-
logue that Nature held with God l
would add to that and say, the pronoun
I invented Immortality. But you tell
me how many people there are in the
human form who can say but very i'm
perfectly, and good many not at all;
the feeble, foolish, whose brains seem
eaten by bad humors as by acids; the
various grades of mental deficiency that
descend into the night of the idiot. Is
there a personal within these unfortu-
mates? What can Diety find for such as
these to do? Why prolong them into a
Hereafter? Is there enough in them to
save them with?
"But why is it, ask you, that mankind
has at length determined to resist the
brutality of Nature, and to make all
those who have been unfortunately born,
the objects of a special care? When you
say: why save such specimens for a
hereafter?' retort: Why then take the
trouble of saving them for the PRESENT.
Why exhaust the capacity of science to
sap the obstinate restrictions, reach the
interior, and put the personal pronoun
there?
"To loose the tongue-tether OF the
mute, to teach the fnger-tips to assume
the privileges of the eye and ear; to put
the idiot into training for speech, man.
ners and decency, to grOpe clear through
his twilight till you touch the nerve of
self-respect; to break open the mauiac's
cage and storm his mind with systematic
gentleness, till in his own face you see
your smile; to lavish appropriations OF
money, method, long breathed skill and
costly life-times of the noblest and most
heroic souls, upon creatures who make
the home a place of melancholy and
modification, who were born to do the
state i'll service, and who die to relieve
us of despair; surely there is something
divine in this, some instinct that a
spiritual quality is lurking everywhere
in matter, some heaven-born suspicion
that the lump of an idiot may be the
matrix of gem.
"And how do you account for this de-
velopment by men of fostering Provi-
dence which rallies to the help of Diety
and repairs defects in nature;-how
account for this human admiration
and sympathy which puts laurels on the
browS that ache with thought for those
who cannot think but who at last car
love? Don't say to me that DR.. Howe
was worthy to be kept in perpetual con
tinuance, but that without him Laura
Bridgman would nowhere ever have
picked her way out of the triple bOlteC
dungeon of her body whore personal .
languished waiting for his miracle. DR.
Howe's achievement is to me guarant!
that the Creator will not let one Of hi
little ones perish. Laura's liberatol
was an incarnate word of God"
If you can discover any weakness il
such reasoning you are keener than VI
ever claimed to be.
A meeting. was held in the NJ. E
church Wednesday evening to see If tn
society would vote to sell the house
. AS we were not present we cannot Civ
: the result of the vote. We have no
seen a market report for long tim
and do not know whether westinghouse
are brisk or slow this week.
: Almost every thing you buy is In tn
c air. If you happen to have fat oil
COW for sale you are informed that bee
1 was never 80 low as now, but when
r peradventure, you invest in a slab o
9 rump-steak, you make the discover
: that there is an infinite distance betwee
> live and dead beef. Selah. Grea
Country! Great Scott!