The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-09-19

~ AID Goethe People are always
 talking about originality, but o what do they mean? As soon as we are born the world begins to work on us, and this goes on to the end. The world works upon us thus through the influence of its social or der and through its literature. and In many ways its procrustian demands destroy the possibility of originality.
 We come into a world with it's ante cedent ideals, models and ideas, With our first intellectual dawn we accept the deductions of the worlds philoso- phy and wh ether we will or not, we are caught up and carried on by It's current of though. This is what Goethe meant. It was Solomon who said, ''there is nothing new under the sum" and ages afterwards Byron facetiously wrote:
 There's nothing original in me.
 Except my original sim"
 Many conclusions of modern scien- lists are older than the Christian era. and yet we are led to think in many instances that these deductions are Of yesterday. Many of the jests, jokes and humorous stories that pass for the products of modern humorists were old when the Romans conquered Greece, and some of us in our college days read them in our first translation ex- ercises. Even our old friend Rip Van Wrinkle was born about the year 200 A. D. Diogenes Laertius was present at the accouchement. He was not called Rip" in those days. He YAs known as Epimenides. On being sent
 ~l~ lz to cave, and there slept for 57 years. Upon, his waking he proceeded to look for the lost sheep. Was this the beginning of the play that made Joe Jefferson famous? Had Washington Irving read 1t?
 Some time ago a cultured Chinaman was entertained by prominent Ameri- can. A humorist of the modern type was present and caused much laughter by telling fresh. bright stories, which seemed never to have been told be- fore. The Chinese gentleman was sub sequently asked what he thought of these exhibitions of American humor. He repleid, "All very good lies, all the way from China"
 New musical compositions are often composed of bars of various old melo- dies that our mothers or grandmothers sang to the harpsichord; and many modern dramas over and over again, reproduce incidents and situations of plays, now so old as to be unknown to the younger generation.
 New stories of love and romance, as a rule, are new only ip the incidenta1s; for the old passion is as old as humanity, and life has ever been familiar with pathos, tragedy and remorse. Edward Everett Hale has recently passed away from mortal scenes. He left behind him . thrillingly patriotic novel, "The Man Without a Country" The sufferings and remorse of this "countryless" man are portrayed by a master. But long years before Madame de Genlis in her Memoirs speaks of the novel of M. de Balouge, ''The Man Without a Nams" in which , remorse and suffering are the conse- quents of a great crime committed by the man without a name"
 All the writers of note have been great borrowers of other mems mental prod ucts Walter Savage Landor gives psychological explanation of the fact In the words. There are ideas which nec- essarily must occur to minds of like mag nitude and materials aspects and temper aments." Thinking of the same common objects and reading on the same subjects. is almost necessarily followed by the sams