Live Oak daily Democrat. (Live Oak, Fla.) 190?-190?, 1907-04-08
A MENTAL TEST FOR THAW.

| nv Thaw safe and sane, or at least
sane. This is a distinction which
comes to but few of US. The vast
majority of mankind have TO go
through life. and keep out of padded
cells, with nothing more than pre-
sumption of sanity in their favor.
The mass of the people are only pre-
Sumed to be sane. They must get
along without a certificate of their
sanity, and make shift as best they
can to keep out of the asylum by con-
forming to most of the those conyen-
tionalities a violation of which argues
for a disordered condition of mind.
Not one in a million of us has had
his or her sanity officially certified to
by as many as two or three inQuisi-
tors. We elect men to the highest
Offices in our gift without demanding
that they produce their certificates.
We allow our daughters TO marry
men whose sanity is not attested I'M
der seal of court. We pay our mon
ey for property conveyed by the war
ranty of men whose legal RESPONSE
bility has never be proved. The
young Pittsburger who was born TO
luck in a money way still has his luck
with him when he gets an Opportuni-
ty TO demonstrate his sanity to men
who are presumed 10 know a bug
when they see one or hear it buzz.
Their verdict sets Thaw on a pedeS-
tai from which he will hereafter be
able to look down upon the rest of
us from even a loftier height than
Pittsburg plutOcracy has heretofore
afforded. We have sneered at Pitts
burg plutocracy, and, in view of its
many remarkable excuses and indis-
cretiOns, have limited that it is not al
ways plumb on the trolley wire. But
here is one of them that can pull his
certificate of sanity and ask us TO pull
ours. How many of US can do it?
1t is a great thing in this mad
world for man to be formally, Of
ficially, and under the sanctity CT an
oath declared entirely sane. Taine,
in writing of Shakespeare, said that
he is master only, or mainly. because
of his grasp of the fact that men are
lunatics. However an idea may be !
reduced and disciplined" says Taine, |
1T still retains likeness to an hal !
Inclination, degree of persistence |
which shows its likeness to a mono |
mania, network of particular Atm
tiles which show its likeness to the |
rawlings of delirium. There is /
nothing else in man, no free and dis
tinct power. He is in himself but /
the process of these headlong impuls-
eS and swarning imaginations; fits,
shocks, transports sometimes, at |
long intervals, a sort of transient
partial equilibrium. This is his real
life, the life of a Iunatic, who now
and then Stimulates reason, but who
Is, in reality, such stuff as dreams
are made on And this is man, as
has conceived him. No
writer. not even Molliere, has pene-
trated so far beneath the semblance
or comon sense and logic in which
the human machine is enclosed. in
order to crush the brute powers
which constitute its substance and its
handspring. Apparently Taine
agrees with Shakespeare that none
OF us can fairly get three wise men TO
acquit us, or to differentiate us from
our kind 1t is rather broad and
sweeping generalization. Emerson
does not turn the key Oh so many of
US In his test. laid down in the asser-
ton that a sense of humor is the only
pledge of perfect sanity. This will
save a great many of us But should
t save Thaw?
Whatever be his sense of humor
now, he was certainly without that I
luminous and clarifying quality when
lie let himself be moved to murder I
'us rage against a man whose al 8
eyed crimes he had condoned by I
marrying the woman on whom they I
we're said 10 have been committed. I
There has been no evidence to show 7
hat Thaw shot to ayenge his own i
lonor as a husband, but only to kill | 9
! man of whose earlier associations i
With Thaw's wife Thaw had been ad- t