The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1905-06-10

of the brute; man and woman would
bow down unaspiring brows under the
weight not of centuries, but of their
own sluggishness and inertness. In
commerce or i'm letters, in the hard
battle of temporal life or in the stern
er struggle of the supernatural, what
duh and useless and unsuccessful
being is he who knows no aspiration
for bstter things, no longing for pro-
gress or improvement.
The great power of mans longing
for physical good. for health and
beauty and comfort of material exist
ence, fills a large place in human his
tory. 1t is in answer to this primi-
tive cry of our nature that men plough
the land and sail the sea; and that
our facorties TEEN like hives with their
multitudes of human bees, our streets
resound with the strident clamor of
commerce, our vessels and our uuays
are laden with the riches of every
cline. For this men court danger and
WOO death and watch and labor and
pray.
Yet not for this alone. Man allows
the salutary urging of his nature to
carry him on beyond his real needs
and his legitimate wants. His appe-
tite grows by what it feeds on until
st becomes abnormal He will have
not only possessions sufficient for his
security, but ample enough to give
him pre-eminence and power. He be-
comes a ruling force in financial cir
cles, one to be reckoned with in the
great game where fortunes are the
counters; he has palatial residences in
town and country, he enjoys every
luxury that material tastes can de-
mand, his name is in the newspapers
and on all mems lips: and he is con-
tent.
His content only proves him all the
less a man. Not by bread alone doth
man live. The beauty and dignity and
perfection of life are not to be bought
i'm the markets of the world, nor can
lands or money satisfy the highest
and most urgent needs of the human
soul. The cleVerness and ability of
one who devotes himself successfully
and entirely to answering this first,
natural need, are but little different
from those of the strong animal wrest-
ing the prey from its weaker fellow.
The desire of material things has a
necessary place in life, but it is not
a high place; it belonged to the cave
man equally with his modern deScen- /
dant, and its fruits and its rank are
truly typified in the rude orna-
ments and heaps of bones which make
interesting the aboriginal dwellings of
our race, as in the luxurious posses !
sions which crafty those whose souls
are dead today to what is most Wor-
thy of human striving.
Not mans material being and de- |
sires, but his spiritual nature, is his |
distinguishing characteristic. Man and |
woman were created in the image and !
of God they were given in |
tellects and wills capable of knowing |
and loving all truth and all beauty; |
they were endowed with spiritual, i'm
material cravings which blow over life |
as did the breath of God over the emp
tiness and gloom of original matter,
and which impel in the pursuit of in
tellectual and spiritual progress. To
these higher impulses man must give
heed. if he would make his life real
ly human, and more than animal. No
no artificial canons can
ennoble a life which in aim and act
is the lowest that we can know, and
which ignores those faculties and
needs that evidence a mans human
ity.
4 wished and understanding was
given me- In every soul is a demand
for intellectual growth. To realize how
is the need for the bread
Of doctrine. we have only to look at
populations whose common heritage is
ignorance; we see how much of the
beauty and whOlesomeness of life is
absent where there is no wish for
or no qualification of that
wish. Intellectual poverty is more de-
grading than physical. Mental food
must be supplied according to mans
needs and opportunities, or he will car
~ a starved, a dying soul in living
body
The more generous is the satisfaction
Of mans wish for learning. the greater
comes into life, the richer
blessings TO ourselves and to others, |
he fuller realization of the perfection
If being Think what knowledge means
wen i'm the way of material benefits.
If advanced surgery and medicine, of |
with distant lands, of the )
elief and prevention of misery and !
lain. Think, too, of its greater bless
ngs in the inspiration that comes :
rom communing with great minds and
Ugh thoughts and heroic examples; in
he subtle delight which Sustains and |
enders pleasant the severest intel
ectual labors. Think of the culture
md refinement which are the fruit of
ligh thinking and which makes the name
# scholar one of honor and pre-emin-
nee in every society. When we realize {
What knowledge means and always has
meant for man, and how today it has
become a necessity, we can readily ;
igree with Carlyle that for one to be
gnorant who has capacity for knowl-
,dge. is tragedy.
But, high and ennobling and neces-
;ary as is human knowledge. is it the
supreme good of life in which mans
iesires are to find quiescence and con-
ent? Is II not true that there is no
absolute incompalability between the
lrOfoundest learning and a dwarfed
md an unsightly soul? Will mere
even of the law and the
prophets. Danish hypocrisy and greed
md lust? Though the very nature of |
earning would seem to imply soul
progress, may it not at times be the
and the instrument of soul
Have not genius and tall
INT been employed time and time again
or purposes unholy, and made the in
;trument of attacks on institutions the
most sacred and the most necessary |
or mans spiritual and temporal we'll
leing? knowledge is power, but that
his power be savingly felt and eXer-
Used, that it may work TO the good
If individuals and of society, it must |
20 hand i'm hand with other powers
hat sanctify and uplift it. Something
more than mere book learning is need |
d TO enable us to rise to the perfec-
ion Of our nature. something more
must go to the making of noble men
md noble women.
There is a higher good than human
there is a purer and more
Iecessary appetite than that of science.
Above the brute and his cravings
tahds man with his intellectual aspi-
ations; but above mere humanity = !
he divine, TO whose image and likeness
re have been made and for the repro
Iuction of whose similitude we must
trive. And the divine likeness is soul
lnselfish, pure, noble, lofty in ambition {
nd act, clear in its perception of the
.reat realities of life and unwaveringly |
aithful in their pursuit, loving, honor
Die and just. In a sense of the neces-
I.y of this divine likeness lies the wis
Iom of life; for a personal vision of it