Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1915-07-28

a means Of giving them solace and a h,a.
in the hereafter
In way It is delightful to discover ho..
much like ourselves were those beonia =,
the prehistoric past we are inclined =
applaud them for being 80 clever after ~,
and so modern. In another way tho "a.
covery has It's terrors. The archeolopist.
spade has dug up a bit OF discoura eeT,a..
| as well-at least a temporary dismav rs h.
altogether cheering that 5000 long veass
have left us so close to Nebuchadne1gsss
wouldn't Xerxes find helmt to fit him i
Berlin? If the dust that once was iooo
brick engravers in Babylon could gather ana
rise again, wouldn't they promptly elect
Samuel Gompers their presidents
It's clever OF the anclents to be so nod0sr
Is 1t clever of us to be so anclent9 You 80
though a bullet may destroy your pfe ~.
more terrible spade may destroy your coae
ceit So the human passions are no bsta.
than they have always BEEN and human
nature is now and forever has been. tbs
same. You see It craven on that instru-
ment, the spade in letters as vivid as thosa
that frightened the life or the sin ont 4,
Belshazzar.
Well what of it2 These things cease n
be discouraging when you have thought
little further along. What II the infant
Confucius did curl his lip over the mother
in-law joke, then nearly as musty as wa
think 1t now? What IL the human mother
in-law and all the other human passions
have indeed been always the same?
This would be dead world IL we put out
the fires of passion Passion is the steam
in our boilers. It's the motive force that
drives all our machinery Of civilization. bur
once you have the necessary steam, the i'm
portant thing is the machinery you want
to have driven. Thank heaven, men stIll
crave the appreciation of other men. Thank
heaven that we all want to outstrip each
other We need all those ancient passlons
Where could we get without them! More
over, we give the steam such a volume OF
work TO do in these days that It has no
chance to burst the boiler.
Croesus Without Home Comforts
We've got forward all right Solomon,
wise guy that he was, would look like
slmpleton today. Croesus went without
nearly every one of the simple comforts in
the modest house of Jones, the grocer
That's nothing. We're better off not alone
in our more numerous creature comforts
Where we have the bulge on the anclents
is In the enormous mass of wisdom we have
amassed In 5000 years. 1t may be passion
that moves the machinery. But it's wisdom
that constitutes the machinery. We've
curbed the old passions by setting them to
work
Thousands of years ago old man Thales
rubbed piece of amber and discovered cleo
tricity. Think for yourself what electricity
alone does today! Really think about 1t.
Not simply that it gives us electric lights,
though they do lengthen our days. Not that
the current gives 1000 creature comforts
unknown to Thales, The beauty of cleo
tricity is that, by doing so much Of our
work for us, 1t gives men time to think.
There's where we have 1t on the anclents.
Every man is his own Socrates today or
has his chance to be. We've got the original
man in us STILL but we make more of him.
There's the answer to the spade.