The Llano colonist. [volume] (Llano, Calif.) 191?-1937, 1922-12-16
BY Geo. D. Coleman

AlS SSAClltlIS LACllOu. Oh lIllIikIlS OF
reasoning from fact and demonstra-
ton. or from the concrete to the abb
stract, that has given US science, evo-
luton, the materialist conception Of
history, Marxism. and all that has made.
for progress. light, sanity, and truth,
has not yet reached the average mind.
But the old scholastic method Of rea-
sonlng from assumption, from the abb
stract to the concrete, from the top
down, rather than from the bottom up,
system that has given Us superstition,
reaction, darkness, the curious forms
of paranoia, or the gnostic attitude, the
wide-apart cults, sects. dogmas, and
intolerance, bigotry, wars, monarchy.
divine right, privilege, and class rule,
and made the world cross between a
great insane and idiot asylum this is
still the popular method of reasoning.
The first has given us all the things
worth while; the second has given us
1.-THE Pandora box of evils that are
SO mixed up in what is called Christian
civilization the thing that is the OPP
posite Of the ideals Of pure Christian
lily and is neither Christian nor civiliz-
ed While science and the first has
made us materially what we are, the
second has left the aggregate still men
tai sayages.
We are still living in the clouds. still
chasing phantoms, still in state of
mental, social, political, and material
chaos; and. if men like Edison, Mar
conf, Steinmetz, and all the inventors
and scientists were to die overnight,
and none arise to fill their places, we
should quickly fall back into bare-leg-
ged savagery. The average mind is
the mind of the sheep, the stationary
mind, the mind that accepts and fol-
lows, and is prepared for the yoke of
the expIoiter, the fairy tales of the the
ologian, and is the material for Billy
Sunday, for cannon fodder, for Prus-
sianism. While people have no mental
originality, no intellectual initiative.
and are the masses, properly spelled
asses" they do not progress, and all
advancement comes from their being
pushed or dragged forward by the real
| ~ mentally-alive and inductive-think-
ing minds. While many who still hold
to the moribund body called the church
but are disguised with Voiva. Billy
Sunday, VIM. Jennings Bryan, and the
niger" preacher and holy-roIler kind
of religion, they cannot purge them
selves of the mental attitude that pro-
duces these monstrosities and undesir-
ables. They hang on to the old
crutches and fear to walk alone. We
brand ourselves with some system. and
accept the collar Of some fad, cult, sect
or philosophy and say we. are this, that
or the other; but fear to be independ-
ent thinkers, to stand on our own feet
and be individualized. The sheep ma
ture still remains in us.
The Greeks carved on their temples,
know ThyseIf,' yet the very temples
they carved this wise saying upon
were devoted to gods now as dead as
the fossil remains of the tyrranasaurus
and the trilobites, and to-day we are lit
tie better. Slavery was then the status
of labor, and to-day our social system
and our. governments, laws and GUS
toms are only these same forms modl-
fled by gradual evolution and sub
iect to the same laws of growth as
are the plants and animals around us.
We are still in general and in. the aggre-
gate, only modified savages, and will
not come out of that status until we
learn how TO think scientifically. Ihot,
the mental attitude. the psychological
status, is the cause and creator of our
social system, our governments, laws,
customs, and character. As long as
sekoIasticism, faith, and loose think
ing continues to exist, so long will SUI
perstition, and many paranoiac forms
Of cults and PHILOSOPHERS rule our
minds, class rule will dominate our
governments. and ignorance, vice, pow
erty, crime, and arrogant wealth exist
in society. The late world war was so
terrible in its effects that it has rous-
ed up sentiment for the abolition of
the senseIess brutality; but most Of
that sentiment comes from those who
still bow the head and bend the knee to
that thing calling itself Christianity,
calling itself religion. Yet the whole
system of theology and metaphysics is