The Detroit times., 1916-07-19
The Awakening.
BY DR.. FRANK CRANE
Copyright. 1915. by Frank Crane)

anything must be struck with the reSem-
olance between his experience and the
phenomenon of coming OUT of dream or
doze into full wakefulness
| remember when | was a boy | was
overfond of Greek, and at high school,
when we were learning to decline verbs
and read crude sentences (such as II see
the man in the house." one of my first
phrases and one of those silly things
man cannot forget, while weighty mat
tiers slip from his memory, could not
wait for the time when we should get to
Homer, but procured thick copy of AN
thon's Homer with Notes (wherein
every word was eXplained), and ground
away at it in private; but | could make
little headway with the tough thing, and
the labor of weeks only advanced me a
dozen lines or so. Then | put the poet
aside, thinking | was too dumb ever to
learn him; but in due time, perhaps a
year or two. we came TO Homer in our
course, and | approached him with dread,
recollecting how knotty puzzle he had
been, but to my surprise found | could
read him easily; the long months Of
grammar and Xenophon had been an APP
prentice slavery, and now, suddenly /
awoke, a free man.
The musician tolls at the piano, giving
days of practice to some difficult passage,
and then one morning he discovers he
can play it as it should be played-and
his feeling is aS if he had come out of
trance of 1rudgery into the light of vir-
tuosity.
If you have learned foreign language
you will remember how, after months of
IdiScouraging effort. when your brain
seemed full Of sand suddenly you real
lied that you could speak and under
stand.
And whoever has mastered any bit of
craftsmanship or game has noted the
same; at first a long period of trying,
concentrating the will upon every move
ment of the hand, and then the awaken
ing-he can do it, he can do it easily;
his reserves have come up during the
night henceforth victory is smooth; the
chrysalis of work has burst and become
gay-winged play.
am persuaded that this same expert
ence is true Of men in the mass, of So
ciety, Of the state, of advancing civiliza-
ton Only here the process is longer,
and takes years, generations centuries.
Reason, vision, the thinkers, poets, and
seers, 90 before like scouts, spying out
the land showing the way. demonstrate
ing what ovRht to be- Men pay small
heed to them pooh-poohng them, some
times smiling at them as crack-brained
creatures, Utopiana, Impractical enthusi-
asts; sometimes cursing them as those
who turn the world upside down." and
sometimes imprisoning, banishing, starv-
ing, burning. crucifying them.
And them-humanity gives a sneeze
and wakes up. realizing all at once that
the fools were right. Then they build
them monuments, and call them Great
Men
This accounts for the otherwise utterly
IncXpicable phenomena of Christianity.
the propaganda of Cooperation, Organi-
zation, brotherhood with Love as the
principle Of human coordination, and not
Selfshness.
We see this truth now, have seen it
for thousand years But We are still
drudging at the grammar of it, still doing
its finger exercises on the piano, still are
in our sweating and laundering appren-
| ticeship.
Look at the muddle Of life as it is to-
day, the unchecked grasping of privilege,
the wrecked victims of social injustice,
the filth, disease, and disorder of the
world. the snarlng conflict of labor and
capital, the rivalry Of religious sects and
their wearying emphasis on non-essen-
tials. the anarchy in Mexico, and .he ut
terlv causeless war in Europe.
There is no power" says II. G. Wells,
mo rule. no discipline This is the world
of the bully. the briGand, and the assas-
sin. the world Of the mud pelter and
brawler. the world Of the fly and the
opcn drain Poverty should be abolished,
disease conquered, toll lightened, war
banished, abundant and happy life freely
bestowed upon every son of man. But
II 4.