The Leon reporter. (Leon, Iowa) 1887-1930, 1907-06-06

are accounted secondary to the great
inventions that lessen the burdens and
perpleNities of life-an age in which
the poet who is contented with pictur-
ing the outer manifestations of things
has been displaced by the scientist,
who delights in searching out the inner
secrets of the univ, rse. But nowhere
have the glorious triumphs of this age
taken more practical form than in the
modern home; which, crowded with
the countless comforts and conveniences
OF life, is veritable Heaven in compare
son with the palatial but empty abodes
of the Golden Age of Greece, or the
turreted but desolate castles of the
barbarous age of chivalry. In fact, the
twentieth century is one sublime and
bewildering panorama of practical
achievements.
In keeping with that tendency in
man which carries him to the extreme,
we observe that the same causes which
have produced such great practical
achievements, have also produced a
practical and material spirit in the age,
which tends to dwarf and deaden the
very noblest sentiments in mans nature.
In the fields of modern thought the
coarser plants Of material prosperity
have so overshadowed the more delicate
flowers of poetry that they have made
but a feeble and spindling growth.
This spirit of the age would prize elec-
tricity more than Immortality, and look
with more pleasure upon a man-made
machine, than upon God-inspired SEN
timent. 1t is a significant fact that all
of the greatest poets lived before the
age of the material prosperity; that the
genius of this age is drifting into the
channels of trade, and instead of
Shakespeare, Milton or Raphael,
we have an Astor, Morgan or Wander
bllt; that our scientists return their
search for the useful in the world of
matter with their eyes spiritually
blinded. These things point to the
fact that our practical age, with all Of
it's boasted blessings, by absorbing the
mind with the baser truths of matter
qualifying it for the higher truths of
the spiritual.
We do not forget that our age (which
draws it's waters from the wells that
are sixty centuries Deep" by the natural
laws of progress is in the advance of
every preceding age; but we civilize
the extremely practical and material
tendency of our age, which has pro-
duced a large class of narrowly practi-
cal men-men who see utility only in
that which ministers to their immediate
and physical wants; who are devoted
soul and body to business, for the trans
action of which they have become mere
machines who consider poetry and re-
ligion as fit only for women and chill
dren; men who are forever crying in
the language of Dickens, Gradgrind,
'ln this life we want nothing but facts;''
men whose imaginations, the wings of
the soul, have become so heavy with
the mud of the material things in
which they grovel that they can never
soar into the lofty regions of thought
where man asserts his kinship with
Heaven, and suggests that he has an
immortal soul. Better be philosopher
and live in a garret, better be a poet
and heir to poverty than one of the
narrowly practical men surrounded
with every comfort and luxury that the
twentieth century can offer. Thus, we
see that what we term the old and new
civilization have the extreme develop
ment of opposite ideas.
Happy will be that age, if it may ever
dawn upon the world, when the central
idea of these two civilizations can be
welded in harmonious equality, when
the love of the beautiful and the love
of the useful shall each have it's de-
signed place in the symmetrical develop
ment of man; then shall he have the
poets eye to see all the various beauty
in nature and in sentiment, and the
perception of the scientist to search
out all that is useful to man in the
hidden secrets of God.