Los Angeles herald., 1909-12-19
DESCRIBES J. D. DIS LETTER AS
PIECE OF MISTY MOONSHlNE

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 7.-LEditor
Herald. 1t would be shocklng-and
unconyentional-and generally bad
form, no doubt, 10 call J. d. DIS letter
of Tuesday a farrago of nonsensical
word spinning. Yet, In sober truth
that is what it seems to be, i'm my view.
And in saying this l have no thought
of disrespect toward J. d. d. He may
well be a most worthy person who, like
a million others, has fallen into the bad
habit of repeating old verbal formulae
of misty mOOnShine,' without discoN-
ering that they have no meaning. For,
indeed. what Vestige Of meaning can
be traced in all this verbiage about the
"verity of material theories" being
"onlv relative? AS if anything what
soeVer that We can perceive, know,
think or dimly imagine can be anything
but relative! What but an absurd
pose is this attitude of pretended re-
serve as to accepting conclusions from
phenomena as reported by the physlcal
senses only" Anyone would suppose
these people had something else than
physical Cor matcriaD senses by ana
in relation to which TO apprehend phe-
nomena, Has not all human conscious
ness-all thought-its origin and being
not partly but wholly-Withn the pale
of the physical senses2 Imagine your
self if you can, deprived of your phys
ical senses, and Of all connection with
and dependence on those senSes-by
Cognizance and recollection thereof
and then try to figure out how much
you would have TO show in the way OF
abstract or spiritual IDEAS Absolute
w nothing! You would be just o dem
milton" useless dead body. What right,
then, have we to assert q am not OBJ
iecting 10 speculation, but only to dog
matism) that because we can only
sense the phenomenon and not the
noumenon, that therefore the phenom-
enon Cor appearanCe) does not truly
represent the uOumenOn Cor reality?
DO we say, when looking at photo
graph of a place or person we cannot
see: "Oh, this lis not the reality, there
fore it cannot be anything like this'?
Or If we gaze into mirror at the i'm
age of something not within our line OF
vision, do we conclude that the object
itself il only we could see II, would
prove to he something quite other than
as 1t appears i'm the mirror? NO; we
take It 0he laws of optics and light.
etc, being consistent and regulaD that
the appearance corresponds 10 the real
ity,
letter that IS mere spinning OF Ian
guage. His assertion that 1.-THE purely
spiritual idea OF God has been dis
cerned in all ages is against the facts.
True the race during long ages OF IN
fantile ignorance has been prone to
dqbble in the mysterious, but it's God
belief" has often been of ~ very ma
terial character, and in many notable
instances of uo more account than the
bogie stories that every child loves to
hear and repeat and shiver over.
For the rcst--it is quite i'm character
with the other part of his screed that
d. d. calls hereditv and environment
(Which are known truibs) false, while
the God idea and "thr spiritual" (Which
are pure speculation and gratuitous at
that he declares Dramatically to be
true. If the "Gol-ilca" is innate and
universal (Which, however. is more
than doubtful, SO also is the love of
gossip and scandal 0f whatever is
sensational or mysterious And we may
hope to outgroW all these pJerle things
as the race grows older and uears its
mental manhood. We're moving that
way, if all too slowly for some Of us!
Glory be! WILLOUGHBT SMART.