The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, 1922-06-12

and an unseen force pulls the strings
The something that pulls the string it
1T, It is blind. It has a marble heart.
1t has no prayers. We think ourselves
free and bravely flaunt the delusions
Of our liberty, but 1t chuckles In the
darkness, knowing we are but slaves
We sit down at life's loom and with
fsverish fingers send the shuttle to
and fro. But in the morrow's light we
discern that It designed the pattern
and shot it through and through with
q hateful black We are helpless We
are in the malignant grip of the past.
The flower and the weed are no more
surely nourished, and their beauty or
ugliness predestined by the soil in
which they grow, than is man de-
termined by the ancestral SOIL mold
Of a thousand years. out of which he
springs, the fatalists say.
We are gripped, they say, by the
things without. The towering brig is
on ocean ways with all It's canvas
spread Shall she drop her wings or
shall she fly2 That is as the wind
determines. So on life's sea our boats
lie idly rocking or glorously they sail
on as the council OF the winds shall de-
cree.
! Our freedom, we are further told is
but as the freedom OF a drop OF wa
i ter IN a glass tube.
l. False. false to the very corel Life's
failures are not from without but
within. The failure of Solomon was
not in the past: the past was noble,
/ heroic. filled with shepherds songs
and psalmists' prayers trumpet
tongued in ethical appeal. The failure
was within.
LIES way is not blocked. Tolstoi,
In his war and Peace" writing Of
| Napoleon's disastrous Russian cam
paign, says that the whole campaign
was against Napoleon's will. that he
wanted ato invade England. that only
higher will pushed him on towards
Moscow's flames. Was that higher
will fate? 1t was not thus. The pow
er behind Napoleon was Napoleon. 1t
was through the forces of his own
genius, his own determination, that he
climbed from the obscurity Of Corsica
to the eminence of Versailles. 1t was
Napoleon, not fate, that battered down
Toulon, climbed the Alps, fought the
battle OF the Pyramids, and set high
in the heavens his star of glory above
the field OF Austerlitz. 1t was Ma
poleon, not fate who, drunk with am
bition pitted hs armies against Gods
almighty SHOWS blundered in reckon
ings and orders on the field or Water
100, and who at last in the storm girt
Helena, his glory gone, out Of his own
baffled ambitions and keen remorse
wove the winding sheet for his own
body and sank slaughtered in
self-digged grave.
Must Have Power to Send It On.
The great bow of Ulysses meant
nothing without Ulysses to bend 1t
and send the arrow to the mark. The
cleared course is mockery the goal
but tantalizing, without force to send
fast the feet straight on. The worlds
supreme need is power.
And how comes power? When John
Ruskin, the great art critic and yet
great philosopher, looking with al
most alteration upon a great cathedral,
was asked by friend why we do not
build such great cathedrals now, he
answered, THE men who built these
cathedrals were men of great convic-
tons" Here in sentence is the
philosophy OF great living. All true !
greatness is rooted in great convic- |
lions. Lacking such greatness, we |
build meanly, whether it be cathedral |
or character. AS great convictions
wax, men kindle into nobleness OF |
thought and word and deed, and as |
great convictions wane, men shrivel |
into littleness in all their words and |
ways.
What, then, are the convictions that |
forward men in high enterprise? To |
begin, the conviction of an ageless,
endless life. 1t is said, THAT the char
acteristics of all Chinese pictures is
Their fIatness, shallowness, fatal lack
ing of depth. The canvas is a mere
surface thing without a ingle depth
for the anchorage of a recollection.
Now human life without those noble
and subtle blends of light
and shadow given by the sense of
eternity, like the Chinese PICTURES lacks
depth, interest and meaning. There Is
no possible greatness for evonescence.
The thing that lives only for the hour
though it may not be without the hint
Of earn, can never powerfully stir the
life of the human stops at the yellow
grave, in such nleanness of dimensions
/
the life of man be bounded by three L
score years and ten, and truly nothing
heroic will spring from his hands or
brain. The tombs of Egypts kings are
noble because they We're constructed
10 last through the eternities and by
hose who dreamed that they should
never die The picture that is painted
only for a day lives but day; the
enduring pictures are those whose col
prs, were mixed with the dream of
eternity. The art that lasts was de-
signed to last, and the artist who has
aot wrought for posterity will be for
gotten by posterity. Only immortals
Will build immortal temples.
Leave now to dogs and apes;
Man has forever" 4
Only those who are rich with that
can be great. The man /
Who has forever can do an enduring
1