American Falls press. [volume] (American Falls, Idaho) 1907-1937, 1915-05-27

uTCOH u OnlO-COuerSW weekly.
JUS AN ANIMAL.
In the stone age the law of might only was invoked. Man
like the beast, preyed upon his fellows. When he had adj
vanced up to the point of standardization, after he had
learned to weave and wear garments: to tame horses.
to cultivate the ground to make agricultural implements
and instruments OF war; to build cities and to learn the
necessity OF enforcing order and had created and subjected
himself to necessary law; he still held in his soul the origi-
nal instinct; the savage claim that the strongest has a
right to rule, really governed him. Only his methods had
changed, the old instinct was still strong within him.
He was like Sisyphus, he was still ready to steal his
nelghbors beeves and then to bride the oracle to predict a
famine that he might advance the price of beef. He still
claimed that prisoners taken in var were his and he had a
right to kill them or reduce them to slavery, and woman to
him was either a ~plaything or a slave. f 'Nia
After men had watched the lives and deaths of men for
many generations and had learned that man, despite his
superior intelligence, had no hold upon his life; that the
strong and weak alike were all fated to die; and through
that knowledge and through the incessant longing to know
If indeed death was the end, religion was finally born;
men began to call upon the gods; to admit some of their
obligations to them and to each other, still the old, origin
al pervision remained; stronger than mans sense of JUS
tice; strong enough in woman to crush back the yearnings
Of maternity and give her the unnatural strength to ex-
pose her deformed child where the cold or wild beasts
would kill it, rather than to permit one to live, that could
not, at maturity, be able to bear arms if a man, or if a fe-
male to become the mother of soldiers.
AS civilization progressed into marvellous enlightenment
when in mechanics men rivalled some of the works of the
Infinite; when in scholarship man attained so high a place
that the mysteries of the sciences were unfolded in a thou
sand directions to him; until even Gods working agent,
electricity submitted to become mans slave; when man
learned to talk, as face to face, with friends separated
from him, by continents and rolling Oceaus; when men had
learned to find the germs of disease in the beaks of in
sects and the miasma of the swamps;t to measure the speed
Of light in it's Journeys from world to world; when music
had taken on the divine tones which it gives out in the
realms where music was born; when the experience OF the
ages had taught that all men are on a level and each one
is entitled to a free right of way in this swift journey pc
tween the eternities which we call our human life; IN the
most scientific nation of the earth we find a subtle intel
lect putting forth a theory; that the nation which IS the
strongest, most skilled and best prepared, has a rlght 10
go out into the world to conquer and possess wnaI Delongs
to weaker nations, and the whole nation has apparently
accepted the theory as right, and has engaged IN the WORK
of fruition this idea. What different IS 1t from Ihe origf
nal idea of the cave man?
In the long cycle of the ages has man returned back to
the place of beginning? Despite his culture has he return
ed with all the old fierce instincts? Has he the same old
promptings only with a scientific knowledge OF how to ex-
ercise them?
When the fury of the present ~clashings shall have,
through exhaustion, ceased, will man have learned the
lesson that he cannot be civilized through learning, that
only the grace of God can subdue his savage nature and
really ~enlighten him?
Some people have predicted that when the present war
shall have spent its forces, a great religious wave will
sweep around the world. Whether that will prove true or
not, of course, remains to be seen, but surely all thoughtful
men will learn from the war the experience that man does
not possess within himself the elements which by any
earthly evolution can make him fairminded, merclful and
Just; that only through the grace of God can he put away
that within him which is of the earth earthly, and put on
the robes of Weekly.
SENSE AT LAST.
DR.. Lyman Abbott has been an apostle of peace for many