The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1913-06-10
says UNCLE CIV

Said a wise physician to me the
other day: Il observe that you have
been saying something about civiliz-
ing the savage tribes off the earth.
You're quite right there, but did it
ever occur to you that a lot of white
people are educating themselves into
a state of mental degeneration which.
for all the good they are able to do
the world is concerned, is death ?
Make a strong, healthy, Intelligent
Indian live in a white mans house
and you are, in six cases in ten, con-
demning him to tuberculosis. Jam
some men through college and you
make them live in a mental atmoS-
phere that is fatal to them for the
same reason that the confined air of
the ordinary house is fatal to the In
dian. There isn't enough outdoor in
tellectuality for the progress of the
race
This may explain in part the fire.
quently recurring attack upon our col
leges. 1t does not appear, however,
that the college man alone is the suf-
ferer from mental suffocating and
toxic poisoning by way of the era
than most of his fellows. The evil
is general, but it is to be eradicated
through the individual rather than
through the mass.
Nine hundred and ninety-nine men
of every thousand have brains that
are in need of ventilation. Their men
tai atmospheres are cloyed with I'M
used and disintegrating information.
Most of US get fresh view about
once a year and then forget that there
is such a thing as an Intellectual open
air treatment. We breathe the same
old air over and over again and Won
der what has become of our boy
hoods dreams and inspiration.
We live in tightly closed houses
when we should be getting next to
nature in teepees. We wouldn't think
of living where we couldn't get our
lungs full of Gods free ozone once in
awhile, but we're not so careful to
expand our convolutions occasionally
to let the Gods truth get in it's work
of renovation.
You can no more be the man that
you should be and get all your
thoughts through the fetid channel
of another mans brain than you can
be strong physically if you breathe
only the air that another mans lungs
have loaded up with poison. You can
no more grow mentally if you seldom
or never get whiff of intellectual
freshness than you grow in stature il
you breathe and rebreathe the same
air that you have long ago depleted.
New thoughts are just as necessary
as oxygen.
Old thoughts are just as poisonous
in time as the air that you have once
used
1t is quite as important to have a
couple of windows open in your up
per story as it is to keep the air cir
culating in the workshop or the bed
room.
Hence the need of recreation.
little good. clean intellectual fun is a
valuable thing for all of us.
We need it just as much as we need
outdoor exercise and for the same
reason.
Also it's a mighty good thing some
times to discard the opinions of your
neighbors, get on your red blanket
and your war bonnet and hike for the
short grass. You may take the wrong
trail. but you'll get your intellectual
lungs full of fresh air. which does
in restoring mental vision.
If you find that you have walled
in and are living in an un-
ventilated corner, it's high time that
you should break for the open for the
good of your soul.
There's the danger of degeneration
lying in wait for you if you stick
new facts, new scenes, new, opinions, |
new mental angles, are what you need. |
There never was inspiration in the
brain that couldn't get out of the clos
ct And the tblack hole of the old
time prisons was love and tender mer-
ry beside the "black holes in which |
most of our brains are imprisoned.
If you don't seem to be thoroughly |
alive in the sitting atmosphere of |
your chosen place-and you can't DE |
reach for your blanket and get you |
to your tepee. Better be a live In |
Copyright. 1913. by the Mcclure |
Newspaper Syndicate.)
Say, pop. what do they mean by an |
The indiscretions OF his youth. which his |
literary executors dig up, instead of al /