The Washington times., 1920-08-01

The Map OF Life.
One Thousand Questions.
Is the Will Free7
Is Life Long Enough?
ARTHUR BRISBANE
tcspyrisht. Is,sJ

We are charged. that must be car
ried on and ended to our honor"
That quotation from Toequeville,
Lecky prints in the title page Of
q book that you are advised to
read, "The Map of Life"
IL is not Lecky's most important
book. His History Of European
Morals" Is the Lecky book that
every man must read before pre-
tending TO discussion of forces that
control men in their slow upward
crawl from the animal kingdom.
But "The Map Of Life" is one
book that Intelligent men, espe-
cially those past middle age, will
read with the intense pleasure
found in conversation with an
earnest man of wide reading and
profound knowledge.
For the young, the most impor-
tant thought is Franklin's "YOu
Value Lille, Then Do Not Squander
Time, for Time Is the Stuff Of
Lie"
The stan OF life, bread, for which
all struggle and for which the ma
tons hight each other. is infinitely
less important, than Franklin's
stun Of life, the time that we
squander. although, unlike bread
and money. it's loss can never be
made good.
. For older men. who have had
their hour and now watch the sun
sinking, who, as Madame De Stael
beautifully expressed 1t, "Lay down
one by one the flowers of the crown
Of life," comfort is in contempla-
tion, OF that which is inevitable,
life's end, when the physical en-
glne becomes too weak for its
work, and the crowded brain unfit
Tor new impressions.
The last words in Lecky's book.
before the word Ffnis, are these:
~The great guiding landmarks Of .
wise life are Indeed few and simple,
to do our duty, to avoid useless sOr.
row, to acquiesce patiently In the
inevitable"
Be 1t remembered, however, that
to "acquiesce in the inevitable" is
only for the old. The young should
never admit that anything is inev-
liable except death itself. And de-
termination, combined with tenn
perance and wisdom, can postpone
death thirty years or more beyond
the allotted, but not inevitable,
threescore and ten.
Men found themselves here.
glued to the earth, gazing up at
the clouds and birds. To ac-
quiesce in the inevitable would
have been to remain fastened to
earth always until the day came
to sink back into Ii. But from
DaedGius to Darius Green and the
Wright brothers men have re
fused to .acquiesce in the inevita-
bic that tied them to earth. Now,
as a reward, they fly through the
clouds.
So it has been with all human
progress. Each man worth while
in history has refused "to acqui-
esce in the inevitable" The great
est brain that earth has produced,
Aristotle, said there could be no
civilization without slaves. But
John Brown, humble, ignorant
man, apparently a failure in all
ways, said there must be civiliza-
tion without slavery. They, hanged
him, but he hanged slavery.
The wise of today say there
can never be real civilization
without wage slavery, a system
that compels masses of men to
take orders with their pay. But
those wise ones, also, may be
mistaken. The radicals that pros
perity despises now, as it de-
spised John Brown sixty years
ago, may prove, in another gen.
Grafton, that men can work as
well under civilizations noble i'm
pulse as under the lash Of neces-
sity. And the inevitable Servants,
obey your masters" so long
preached may cease to be inevi-
table.
What men will to do,, they can
do.
slnree uunOIcu anu HIty pages
Of "The Map of Life" are ten
thousand thoughts that will serve
you after the book shall have been
forgotten. 1t is with books as with
beefsteak. You are working now
partly with the body built Of food
eaten in childhood. You cannot
remember that food in detail, but
it created the skeleton and muscles
that now support you and that are
kept going with daily food sup
plies. So with books. You may
not remember all or much, of what
you have read. But memory is
not the thing.
What did the books do to and
for your brain7 That is the ques-
tion. Your mind works now with
the thought Of yesterday and past
wears. Your mind will work better,
after you shall have read, digested
and stored away the thought offer
ed YOU in Lecky's MAP of Life"
Let those past twenty, thirty, forty
and upward remember, as few do,
that the mind, like the body, must
be fed regularly or it will grow