The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1907-11-09
PROPHECY AND ACCOMPLISHMENT.

The high civilization of ancient peoples is of
ten brought forward by modern writers and in the
odous soil of comparison the attempt is made to
belitle the accomplishments of the twentieth cen
fury. Assertions are frequently met with that in
the arts and in the simple virtues of the ancients
there is to be admired than in all the glorious
triumphs of today. These sentiments may be only
barking back to the good old days" in which
gray heads live their declining years; or it may
be that the veil which shrouds in all but oblivion
the amiable dispositions of extinct races and which
when pierced allows light to fall only upon their
virtues leads the poetic mind to marvel at tais lost
perfection.
But the ancients did not have any automobiles
or telegraphs telephones or railroads, and their
knowledge of the sciences was no more than enough
to make their wise men prophets and dreamers.
With all our profound respect for the glories of
the ancient civilizations we are still most deeply
grateful for having been born to live in the more
if less beautiful years of the twentieth
century Now we do things of which the ancients
dreamed. If our civilization is not so refined, our
progress has some compensation for
the loss, and the ancient perfection furnishes us
worthy ideal toward which to strive.
Nowadays we look back over the progress in
things and compare what is and what
was. 1t is only hundred years since Robert Full
ton was laughed at for his crazy notions regarding
steam navigation, yet today the Lusitania is the
ideal which navigators and ship builders are striv
ing to improve The fact that Fulton was laughed
at, and Daguerre landed in an insane asylum, and
DR.. Jenner lost his social position and medical
oil bo1J
world of science and invention is evidence that the
people of their day were not prepared to follow
their leaders and superiors. They applied their
whereas the wise men of ancient times
specialized hypothesis which never have been and
never will be solved. Morse, Bell Edison, Maroon
Pasteur, Burbank Roentgen and others have done
more for the world, have quickened the thought of
more people and have accomplished more practical
good in the world than all the ancient civilizations
in their palmiest days ever dreamed These men
nave worked out SO many ideas and demonstrated
so many truths of different kinds that the people
now accept and believe almost any wild fancy
which may be told them. From ineredulity twenty
years ago the masses have gone to the extreme Of
,redulity, and in the realms of science and inven-
ton they imagine their most absurd dreams may
DC dccoiAP11Sltu. ITOpnesylng as 10 the innings
which soon are to be done, and vivid imagination
guiding the prophecies, the people who do not
Know anything of the limitations of the human
mind spur the inventors to greater and greater
Effort. Whether credit will ever be given to the
,riginators of a new idea which may be turned
nto practical use by some one else is question
most difficult to answer. How much the inventor
nay owe to the prophets in the goad they may fur
lish to do more and better things no one can tell
But there is an intimate connection between
prophecy and accomplishment, and the one con
signed to oblivion as a false prophet in this anna
lie age may furnish an idea which will not see
ruition until the twentieth century is but a mem
ry The pure intellectually and love of the beau
iful which are the reputed characteristics of an
ient nations may again return to earth, but not
ntil science and invention have run their course
nd there is nothing more to discover, nothing
nore to invent, and the world settles down to a
um-drum existence wherein poets can inspire no
1ore the minds of men bent on accomplishing
THAT never was before And that day is not yet
pom us.