Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1922-06-27
GERMANY, FRANCE, ENGLAND,
ETC
By DR.. Frank Crane

We often make surprising discoveries when
we stop to think about how we are thinking,
We discover that we thinking about things
which do not exist at all, except as creations of
our own mind
For instance, there is no such thing as Ger
many, there is no such thing as France, there
is no such thing as England, there is no such
thing as America. All these words are ikons.
They are little counters that we have made to
think with. They are like the mud gods the
heather make so that they can have some kind
of notion of God which they can grasp.
One of the earliest symptoms of the savage
mind is the tendency to personify. One of
the latest things arrived at by culture is the
ability to get abstract idea clearly visoned
We personify things which are of large
and complex nature simply because our minds
are too weak to see them as they are, and we
must make an image Of them.
The first religions were all idolatorieS. And
the trouble with the worlds thinking is that
it is still idolatrouS. We speak of Germany
refusing to pay its debts, or Germany being
the enemy of France, or Germany doing this.
or wanting to do that. And we speak of
France as being militaristic, or as having good
taste, or as hating Germany, and so on. Really,
there is no Germany. There are only people
who live in the territory called Germany.
There is no France, but only people who
live in certain territory and speak the French
language
But they are all folks. Just folks. And
down under the skin they are very much the
same kind of folks that Americans are or
Japanese, or Chinese, or Australians
1t was in London a month recently and nv
greatest disappointment was that ! never saw
a typical Londoner anywhere except in my
minds eye.
If the Englishman, as we see him on the
stage IN America with drawl and monocle
and peculiar air, exists in London, l never
happened to see him. People | did see there
are altogether such as we.
An EnglShman travelling in the United States
would have much difficulty in finding a typi-
cal American; that is, anybody that looks like
Uncle Sam and cheWS tobacco and talks
through his nose and says wal and all that
sort of thing.
What we need before we can have sue
ceSStul League of Nations is League of
Thinkers. The fundamental necessity in the
world is to clean up its thought.
| DOUBTLESS there are national characteristics
ana summarizes as there are unqueStionably ma
| tional languages; but all these are surface
| matters. When you come down to the real
people, they are about the same everywhere
in the world.
They all want to eat and drink and love
and play. They all want to get on They all
want to have their fellows think we'll of them.
They all want to do right. There is no diff
| ference.
The one universal error the world needs to
overcome is that certain virtues are the pc
culiar property of a peculiar race, and certain
vices belong to other races. The truth is that
all virtues belong to all people, and SO do all
vices. Their forms, their modes of expression
and their degree may vary. But we are all
human beings.
| Some are black, some are white, some are
| yellow. Some are more developed than others.
| Some have more favorable environment than
others. But God has made every human being
out of the same kind of mud.
Copyright, 1922 by Frank Crane)