The Lakeland evening telegram. (Lakeland, Fla.) 1911-1922, 1921-05-27
THE SINFUL AGE

Probably there has never been generation
since man began to take thought of tomorrow, that
many good people did not look around at the
evidences of degeneracy confronting them. and
sigh regretfully for the good old past, the old
fashioned girl the boy of ''ye olden time" and
the men and women who constituted the moral
giants of those departed days
We have evidence early in the Bible of this
looking backward There were giants in those
days, we are informed, and we can almost see,
through the mist of the centuries the facial expires
sion with which the first chroncler thus indirectly
condemned the new. Homer's heroes speak of
these degenerate times, though the times he speaks
of were back in the days of the major prophets.
The old German epics, the legends of King
Arthur, the chronicles of every modern country,
contain similar evidence of this recollection of an
elysan past and the comparing of ii with the pres
ent. We might conclude from this that the course
of civilization has been backward-that instead Of
descending, evolutionists proclaim, from the
thropo:d ape and forging upward towafd the per
feet man, we started from the perfect man and
have been steadily vending our way toward the
ape.
But such actual facts as we can gather do not
support this view. I axe any period in history
that is fairly we'll known-say the Elizabeth pc
Rod of England, the Augustan period of Rome
or the period of Louis XIV in France-and COM
pare it with the present. So far as the compari-
son can be extended. it is all to the advantage of
the present. Morals and manners are vastly higher
now than then.
Possibly women covered more of their person
then than now, but their conversation much more
than made up the difference Read one of Shakes
peare's plays the first few scenes in OthelIo for
example. and compare that with what the present
age would tolerate Examine the tales of Rabe-
las, or even the comedies of Moliere 1t takes a
lot of pruning to adjust them to the modern ear
axe of the obscure stories from the Latin
net the classics prepared for the school rooms,
but the tales of Ovid, and lot of other stuff which
nobody even dares to translate-records of I'M
believable acknowledgement then say if you cam
that they relate to better age than this
1t may be said that the coarse talk of the people
In the days Of Elizabeth was no reflection on their
morals. AT least, it showed their interets We
can gather from what tickles crowd pretty
fair estimate of its moral caliber Queen Eliza
beth herself INDUCED in public witticsms that the
lowest dance hall would Danish today; and, by way
OF commentary, it may be recalled that the old
question of whether she died virgin or mother
has never been cleared up
The truth is, the human race is constantly get
ting better-not SO fast, possibly, as some of its
members would wish, but as fast as so great
change safely be made The fact that we
concern ourselves at this time about the length of
womans skirts, the alcoholic content of mems
beverages, or the various other things which make
up our revised moral CODE shows that we are
legislating for better race than Shakespeare, or
Moliere or Horace ever knew.