The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1912-04-19
BY ESTHER GRIFFIN WHITE.

It must fight to live.
1t Is created haphazard.
It's individual entities are here by
purest chance.
Birth Is a mere accident.
Lucky or unlucky, fortunate or I'M
fortunate, heredity and environment
alone will determine.
1t is the egotism of man which has
created REORGANIZATION.
The same quality which has manu-
featured heaven.
Heaven" and hell are the product
of man. Not God.
All creeds, all religions, all systems
and PHILOSOPHERS are of human origin.
Perhaps that origin may be divine.
No one knows.
Man may be the highest type OF In
telligence yet evolved.
So far as man himself knows this is
true
Because he knows nothing that is
not limited by the beginning of his
creation and the end of his conscious
being.
The span of the life of man typifies
that of humanity.
Within its confines all knowledge is
acorraled.
Man knows nothing he has not dis
covered through his own agencies.
He feels nothing he has not evolved
out of his own experiences.
Annihilation is inimical to human
consciousness.
1t is impossible of conception to the
individual.
That he should be consigned to eter-
nal oblivion is unbelievable
Therefore religions, creeds. philoso-
phies.
He has fooled himself by the splen-
dor of his own ethical accomplishment.
Is blinded by the brilliance of the light
made by his own hand. Is delighted
with the wonder of his own creation.
Is bewildered by the multiplicity of
this creations parts. Becomes mex
tricably entangled in his own opposing
logic.
But his egotism rides dominant
Behold" he cries, what God has
created!
MET"
And knows not that a far greater
miracle has been achieved-the crea-
ton of God by man.
1t is sad, a tremendous, pitiful
and, in the end, sardonic spectacle
this will to live.
This horror Of decay.
This determination to combat the
grewsome DOGGY that skulks on the
fringes of life.
And the knowledge way down at the
!. bottom OF things that we are as help
less as rats in trap.
That we are puppets. The plaything
and sport of some unknown and ma
ign force.
What! "Beneficent" you say?
Can a beneficent force consign two
thousand unoffending beings to instant
oblivion.
Is it a beneficent force that snuffed
the life out of $4,000 persons decade
ago through the eruption of Mt. Pelee?
That swept five thousand men and
women to death through the tidal
wave at Galveston?
So long as you do not get in it's way
this force may seem to be benefcent.
1t is negative, however, not positive,
In It's operations.
Get in its path and you are flung
aside like straw in a flood. Your hui
man habitation topples like house
Of cards. Your existence collapses like
a portable cup. You have no more
chance than a baby with roaring
lion.
Humanity must have some anchor to
tie too, however.
And this anchor Is its handmade re-
ligions.
Justice, perfect and absolute, is the
highest ideal of man.
Therefore he has created just God
How then does he explain the cruel
manifestations of injustice?
He doesn't explain it because he
can't.
Because he Is called on to explain
this anachronism in his system
which he still denies is his system but
that of Superior Being-and because
he must make some stand or forever
be discredited, he resorts to evasion,
to hypocritical maunderings, to vaga-
ries of statement, to platitudinous SER
monizing, to WORKOUT argument, to
moth-eaten tradition, to false premises,
to ethical smuggery
Strip off every sham, scrape right
down to the bone. tear away all pre-
tense-and what do you find?
The obsession of humanity that the
death of the individual ends that indi-
viduais conscious life.
Science teaches that nothing is lost
That what seemingly disappears re-
appears in another form. And there is
nothing in Nature to disprove this as
sertion. Everything to prove it.
All you need to do is to observe the
changes of the season
To note the outward expression of
heredity.
And. If you care to look at it that
way, the lesson you learn is that it is
idle. nay criminal, to fail to enjoy the
present moment.
Why wait for a future which may
never materialize?
Why waive it for mythical here
after?
That person is the wisest who takes
what the gods give.
ut is the height of folly says Scho-
penhauer, ito refuse the present hour