The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1913-07-26
SAYS UNCLE CIV

After all, there is little virtue in icon
oclasm. The sledge hammer and pole
ak reformer is usually animated by a
mere desire to go out and bust some
thing. In time he gets the habit and
doesn't greatly care what he ''busts'' He
merely wants to see the fragments fly.
Nedr!y zVOo years ago number of we'll
meaning but igngorant persons lately con
verified to Christianity conceived it to be
Tine thing to smash the magnificent
STATUES OF Greek and Roman gods. The
Olympian deitfes were pretty well out of
business anyhow and beyond adding the
names of few martyrs to already bloody
local traditions, the Christian iconoclasts
dldn accomplish a great deal. They sue
ceeded, however, in depriving the world
ancient sculptors and to that extent work
ed an injury to the race at large which is
about all that the iconoclast ever accom-
plishes.
The modern industrial and social icon
oclast stands aghast at the folly of the
barebrained religious monomaniac who
broke statues and burned libraries, but
in this he presumes to be outraged at
the acts of his betters. A calm survey of
the earth's experience with image break
ers is sufficient to convince any man cap
able of thought that good ever came
from the brea king.
Progress is a matter of substitution
rather than destruction. No institution
dies until it becomes useless. Its useless
ness can never be demonstrated until
something better is offered in its place.
We never know our idols to be mere
clay until we see golden images beside
them. We never realize that a pet in
stitution is faulty until forced to
admit that another gets better results.
When we realize this, We Immediately
abandon the old for the new and if we
do not care to preserve the outworn thing
a relic the junkman, who is the vir-
tuous iconoclast in the world is welcome
to it for the price of a pound of coffee.
The real, dyed-in- the-wool iconoclaSt does
not love the substitution method. 1t is
too much like work and there are no chips
to fly, no wreck to contemplate, no angry
%r-f %1,0
voice of the devil that his property has
been destroyed by a maniac. 1t would
be no fun for him to break an image
or destroy an industrial institution or
wreck an order of society If there were
no one to protest. He's a paranoiac with
a lust for violence, and, more OFTEN than
not, he wants to go Jail in order to see
his name in the newspapers. 1t makes
no difference to him that we lament the
with to build them anew 1t does not
matter that men of sweet speech utterlng
persuasive reasoning, follow him to draw
us from error. He is not concerned with
resuIts-he merely lusts for destruction
and burns to express his maghgnant hate
After some uncounted thousands OF
years of aspiring effort we still have
society in which there are grfevious faults
There be wrongs that cry TO heaven and
in the name of all the gods we spill blood
and waste lives needlessly- But the men
who are forcing the world ahead are
not they that seek to demonsh existing
conditions Rather they are those who
nut a virtue beside a fault, efficiency be-
side inefficiency, right beside wrong, ana
point the difference so that all men may
see These men are dreamers and doors and
builders In them there is no violence
They have nothing to do with iconoclasts
They had rather prove the helplessness of
an idol than break IT.
The name of the most terrible iconoclast
of all time-he who burned the temple or
Diana of the Ephesians-is lost. The
FDhesians did the very human thing of
| suppressing his name in order that he
might lose his coveted notoriety- But we
still gratefully remember the name or
many humble and obscure carpenter or
| of his Zines set good over against it and
made himself light in darkness-(Copy-
right, 1913, by The Mcclure Newspaper
Syndicate)