El Imparcial. (San Juan, P.R.) 1918-197?, 1919-02-04
EDITORIAL VIEWS


es{Sg4 {Eg =. N Anything abstract,
'Ai* HANDICAP . PRoeREss ineoFPsrss which ,i,
:ara------- cannot be made ont
sn"T~ by any of senses,
wh aways instnctyey try associate compare with
something similar that saw, heard seed tasted OF
touched before AS Aristotle used to say there IS noh
ing the mind aehic did not come through the senses
What was your material idea of God, when you were
small child? We of don't know how you made II
out used to think of HI M as OF an old man. with
Kindness and wisdom radatng from his long-bearded
colntenance. He masculine to our mnd years De-
fore we knew anything about Spanish grammer which
gives the word Dios masculine gender We don't renle1-
ber exactly how we first arrived at the conclusion tnat
God is masculine perhaps saw him pictured near our
cradle olfay be we inherited conception in the mind
Which not at all impossible The tendency, which is
not heresy priests ana dogma say So ls caed
dnthfOpOnOfphasnt
If ANYBODY should ask YOU about the possibility of
finding life in the Sum- your first answer most probable
would be in the negative fer the term te appeals to us
Just as around here and cannot conceive any
organisms capable of living in fire The ancients had
some mythical idea of sort of saamander that lived in
Ire In Mars, the Moon, any other celestial globe
where time another natural conditions may have
been like our own we think of forms of life except
as we them the Earth. Marans and SeeTltes
human beings less like and some people even
have hopes to communicate with them by means OF tee
graphic devices, and visit them when aerial navigation
makes more progress.
VI Progress has been greatly handicapped by asump
tions in this connection AS cannot start ON the road
otQ discovery and invention except by basng ourselves
on the knowledge already possess and proceed by
analogy of the incogna looked for with the known pece
dent it happens that frequently the investigator finds
himself herself before unsurmountabe barrier of
pEejudce, and can't go ahead until some casual and hap
pv circumstance throws unexpected light along the road
sotoWars the future In order to make clearer what we
ahall explain in the closing paragraph, let look for
some material instances and from the concrete shall
oDasS to the abstract
v Have you old print in which the first rail
road coaches were depicted? Then you have how
much the builders of the primitive railroad carriages fol-
,arawed the old horse coaches; the
both vehicles Notice how nconyenent the shape
and general construction of the thing; though the
sstTuctors had idea Of physics and many of them
doubt knew lot about the science prejudice got the
best of them, and they simply copied the old stage coach
yeor something similar making the vehicle 1compaFa
svey short and with the center ef gravity very high for
body that to travel much faster than the horse
carriage 1t only experience that taught afterwards
that the railroad carriage should not be too much like
the old coaches. With the first air-SpS made the
8sng; the inventors put sails in them Before that lea
rus, mythology tells us, attempted to fly qOh cpgs
and God only knows how progress air navigation would
gone it not for the happy application Of the
screw-shaped propeller, GRlike the wings of Bird
though working precisely the principle And
on: we the hypoderic needle not because it is the
best thing make the injection but simply because it
the thing suggested by its precedent probably the
fangs Of the poisonous snake
Now reader: have tried to demostrate how difficult
is go ahead along the road of material pro-
gress Handicapped he is by those very things
agwhch he has to take for models Imagine, then what
amentaI effort must be made by whoever discovers any
moral political principle, which when properly applied
shows by the results that it really of those inter
sdI lights spoken of by Descartes Are you surprised
THAT in the matter government able
to go beyond the imperfect republican FORM called by
many failure? Are you surprsedwhen you that in
social order find ourselves perpeXed before the
future, and don't know how to go about it?
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