The Llano colonist. [volume] (Llano, Calif.) 191?-1937, 1922-07-29

living IlSAll SuIIOuIlQlnS SOnOillOHSs dS~
sociations and environment. Granted
that by conscious effort under wrong
conditions a considerable proficiency in
| the way of right thinking may be
reached, all such attempts must newt
ably bear the stain Of artificiality and
self-consciousness, hence the true right
thinker will, like Tolstoy. employ bis
thought force toward moving into a
right environment rather than stimulate
egomania by constantly exerting effort
to live and think right under wrong
conditions Ian utter impossibility).
Democracy is of the heart. It can
become a part of the life and soul OF
those who live in equality with their
associates and those only. However
well disposed he may be. the man who
lives under regime of privilege ac-
cepts service but does not serve. re-
mains aloof from his daily need of toll,
even tho he talks right, he is a pluto
crat; he neither lives nor thinks cor
rectly, and his body will pay the penal
ity Of early dissolution. Democracy,
like all other virtues, can be lived in
to a person, but cannot be talked in.
All mental and physical culture that
| it real, that endures. that imparts a
moral stamina transmissable in ever-in-
creasing rythm, generation after gem
Grafton, is the result of work done in
right environment for useful pur-
pose-not for show or for the purpose
of culture nor.for praise or glory. Ehe
lion is strong as a result of generations
of fighting because he had to fight;
the deer is swift on account of genera
lions of running because he was fore
ed TO run. This knowledge of the pro-
cess of self-improvement should be
made 4.se of by young and old. To
withhold it from the young is a crime.
Children and adults who acquire
their habits Of right thinking as a re-
suit of being reared in an environment
of right living will indicate the source
of their culture BY every act, BY each
form of expression. by the turn Of ev-
cry sentence in their conversation, by
their point of view in relation to JUS
tice, morality, education, health, labor,
politics, philosophy, by what they do
as we'll as by what they say, and it will
be invariably the mental attitude that
declines privilege, that in the presence
of plenty insists on being satisfied with
merely enough, that feels sympathy
and not vengeance toward wrong-do-
ers, that insists in the interest Of health
and economic rectitude on doing a pro-
per proportion of useful physical work
each day, and declines to accept augh;
that others may not have the counter
part of on the same condition. This
is democracy on working basis
1t is time that parents, teachers,
judges and statesmen, each in their
own field, realizing their sacred duty
to the coming race, should abandon
forever their temporizing methods. that
have invariably appealed to the worst
side of the>>natures with whom they
deal, and under guidance of correct
thinking in harmony with established
educational and corrective methods,
within reach of all. but still unused,
proceed to rational solution of the
problems of education, labor, crime,
health, economic and political well-be-
ing.
The subtle dangers, more evil in
their destroying effects than all the
punished crimes-evil unconsciously
initiated by deluded preachers, blum
dering parents, misguided new thoters,
esoteric dreamers and quack philoso-
pliers are practically disclosed in the
following explanation:
Degeneracy invariably follows the
substitution of artificial and subjective
methods for the normal and objective.
The effects Of such substitution always
results in physical, mental and social
abuse.
Useful work as a part of education
is the most valuable exercise worth
while. Pampering of children de-
stroys their initiative, originality, self
reliance. industry. The eyes. muscles.
and brain lose their alertness and
lapse into disuse; medicine and other
forms of artificial abuse are resorted
to, to take the place of right feeding
and proper exercise; and disorganiza-
ton follows. of which some of the
symptoms are anaemia, myopia, glut-
tony, laziness, insolence, feasibility, in
sex-perversion. paresis.
Thought force. when brought into
play to deny or divert the effects of
abuses wrought by parental ignor-