Evening star., 1932-12-24

| fuse to conform to the social and me-
chanical pressUres all about us, people
who are willing to insist that manhood
is more than youth and the internal
freedom Of q mans soul is too valuable
to sell, especially for the petty price
offered by civilization at the moment.
IT we can get some rebels, real
rebels, competent rebels, against the
Standardization and stupidity of the
chance Of arriving at spiritual ma
turity."
It has always seemed to us that our
glorious land had rather overdone the
cult Of youth.
one hears too much about Mildred
Babe Didrickson, worthy young woman
though she Is, and not enough about the
older ladies who bake the good pies
and cakes, and run households, and
do all the unromantic but really essen
tial things.
It has got so nowadays that one Is
supposed to look, act and talk young,
whether one is young or not.
Thinking people have always known
better, but we are caught up in q net
Of little or no thinking, bending the
knee before numbers rather than before
the greater virtues.
Of the people operate are baSically cor
rect; 1t Is only when they are carried
too far, as they almost always are,
that they strike the careful observer
as inimical to the best there is in us.
It was Robert Browning who wrote,
"Grow old along with me, the best Is
yet to be. the last of life for which
the first was made"
The poet, as the preacher, sharply
divides the world of human beings into
two classes, thinking people and nom
thinking people.
Whether it does any one any good
to think, in the long run. is another
question, but the fact is that many a
human being will say, In all humility,
II cannot help it."
Think one must, in the best fashion
one may, and If q man thinks even
in the slightest degree. he comes in time
to realize that, as DR.. Bell says, the
half II the only pleasures one had in
youth are those which turn into in
tolerable sources of boredom at about
the age Of IS years.
Therefore, let no young man or wom-
an Of common sense be ashamed of
being serious. "Wisecracking' and the
like have their places as diversions, at
certain ages, but they are scarcely the
end-all and be-all Of life.
Americas Emerson speaks Of "the
dullness Of great and cultivate mind"
What did he mean by that? He meant
only such dullness as Is inseparable from
seriousness. Only such dullness as is
called such by the mind which cannot
tolerate, or thinks 1t cannot tolerate,
anything save something catchy"
something new" something "snappy,"
something silly.
It Is a great deal easier not to think
than to try to think, as every human
being has discovered since humanity
became conscious Of itself.
Thinking, even routine thinking, Is
dificult. II it be true to itself, 1t comes
in time to look with contempt upon
mere artifice, dealing only with con-
scious attempts to attract attention for
its own sake.
The artless seduction Of the child is
seemly and right but when the same
cute tricks are carried onward they be-
come anything but attractive.
The thinking life, rather than the
thoughtless life, is the ideal for all who
know that 'the ways to peace Of soul
and Joy Of life when once ones child
Thinking is not an end in itself, but
way to an end; the difficulties of
realization are far greater than those Of
thinking: but the thinking we call con-
temptation Is necessity
Truth, beauty. reality-these always
have been and still are the ways to ma
ture happiness, and Christmas time is
better time than most to think about
them.