Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-07-07

Similarly they would like to say. I'VE
have wiped out the menace OF drugs" "
Neither of these goals seems possible
Of attainment. but humanity will grow
taller in reaching for them.
The Sermon on the Mount is perhaps
the greatest evidence of mans ability
to set for himself q godlike ideal. His
substitution Of its precepts as his rules
of conduct is distinct moral advance
from the prehistoric code based on the
rightness Of might. Only now and then
are isolated men able to put into prac-
tice the precepts of the Great Teacher,
but that they should want to do so Is
an upward step.
believe that there is fundamental
principle at the bottom Of all things
living, a law, II you will, whereby every
harmful force that may be Introduced
into a situation is Immediately met by
counter force Of equal strength
which is corrective in It's tendencies,
Just as an electric current moving
through q conductor excites a counter
current. It is, therefore, necessary when
we are looking ut any situation which
appears to be productive Of evil to see
If there is not also something In 1t pro-
ductive Of good.
Question Of Standardization.
M. Caillaux and other alarmists see
m the forward march OF science and the
development Of machinery only what
they feel are the evil results OF standard"
ization and the crushing Of individual
ity. They deplore the fact that most
civilized peoples today wear the same
kind of clothes made by the same ma
chimes, see the same motion pictures,
read the same books and absorb the
same ideas, thus losing the opportunity
for individual expression. In the In
terest which science takes in the ALI
mentary canal--that Is, the material
betterment of Hnan--they see the ne
glect, and hence the destruction of the
human soul.
What they overlook is the fact that
science is also giving the human soul
In the mass greater opportunities for de-
velopment than 1t has ever known be-
fore. think that the danger Of stand
ardi2ation, which has been much writ
ten about of late, has been greatly ex-
aggerated. Let us look at the facts. We
say, for instance. that our clothes are
standardized, that there is no tndivid-
uality In them. Yet every woman on q
Spring shopping tour win admit that
she has hundreds, literally thousands.
of possible combinations Of costume
from which to choose.
On the contrary, LII an unmAchinized
rural European community, We md that
the peasant women are not only wear
ing costumes almost exactly alike. but
that often the patterns have not chang
ed for centuries. They have become so
standardized that sometimes, as in Brit
tany, the very town from which
woman comes may be determined from
the trimming on her bonnet. What
chance Of individual expression have
such women? If We go still further
afield to the savage man, who has
never seen a machine of any kind
We find the possible styles Of breech-
cloths and beads limited to perhaps
a dozen.
The same analogy may be carrid out
in the matter of reading. Before the
mahctne came to make books cheap and
plentiful the average man had never
read even one. Even If he belonged
to that small group who could read
there were perhaps not more than
dozen books within his reach, each one
laboriously made by hand. Now the
lowliest man is given the ability to
read and has plentiful opportunity to
stimulate his mind and broaden his
view by knowledge of what is going
on all over the world and what other
people are thinking. His mental horiz-
on is widened as greatly as was the
horizon of the known heavens by Co
pernicus. How has his soul or his
individuality been stifled by this fling
ing open of the prison of ignorance?
Again. take the automobile, a typical
standardized machine. Before its COM
ing many a man lived and died with
out ever having ventured hundred
miles from the spot where he was
born. Now, with It's help, people in
every walk of life go from one end