The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-09-23
Moulding
FROM New York paper the other day
 clipped the following:
ny pR. FRANKa cRANE

jTR0M New York paper the other day I clipped the following:
 Rex, giant king cobra and the star of the reptile house at the BronA Zoo, since he was brought from India seven years ago, died yesterday because of the failure of the usual process by which he was wont to shed his skin about twice every year. For four years regularly every Sunday afternoon there would appear at Rex's cage a tall asceptic-appear- ing, ehoppery Hindoo, his thin-featured face framed in long, raven black hair. He would doff his turban, and, Ignoring the crowd, make obeissances and mutter prayers in worship of the cobra. He appeared yesterday, and when he saw that the cage was empty and the snake was dead he knelt at the empty cage and murmured prayer, interspersing it with low, wailing cries.
 1 Get that picture in your minds eye-the cobra dead because he could not moult and the heather man heartbroken before the thing he worshipped, and you will see the symbol of a great truth. .k@
 For moulting is necessary not only to fea- thered fowl and deer and snakes, but also to mems minds. rA t,r
 It is by shedding the dead skin of our out grown ideas that we live; and if we cannot shed we die, or dry up, which amounts to the same thing. 4.
 Any man who has grown Intellectually and spiritually can look back and see all along his upward way the cast-oe skins of convic- tions, views and beliefs which once fit them, but as he grew, became Inenaces to his life.
 It is a common notion that when one changes his conceptions of gfhe universe, des- tiny and the meaning of life and death-that is, when he alters the form of his "faith'- it is due to laxity of morals. X free thinker" is supposed to connote that one is loose in morality. That is because that by "moral' we usually mean a conformity to custom.
 If by morals, however, we mean ones loyalty to his convictions. faithfulness to the truth as he sees it, and sincere following ot the light that appears to him, then ones faith ought to be a constantly growing, and hence changing thing. - tt
 The human race moults. That is the way it progresses. We could not go back now to the ideas of government that prevailed in the year 1000, nor to the ideas of theology that were universally accepted then; nor to the ideas of business, of education, or the play they had in that era.
 We have moulted the views of human rela. tionship held by the Puritans; right for tEeir time, they would not be right for ours.
 We have moulted monarchy absolutism, alchemy, astrology, necromancy, witchcraft and hundred other dead skins. | We are moulting the idea of competition and trying to form a new skin of co-opera- tion. nov We are constantly shedding all noti6As, whether in the schoolrooF, the market place. the legislature, or the church.
 | If we get rid of our old skin before we have grown mature enough to do so we are in peril. If we do not get rid of it when we have outworn it we are in peril also ias
 The secret of strength and vitality either in individual or in social life. to mouIt prop erly.
 | How many people, bewailing "the danger ous changes" of mems minds, reminds us of the l,oor Hiadc9i Mss5