Imperial Valley press., 1936-08-23
IA THAT good are you?

w Brazen question that! But one which you
can't escape asking, That is, you can't escape
asking if you think! There is 'the hitch Not
many of think. Pictured here is the robot
exhibited recently at the San Diego fair Ex-
cept for the ability to think, this machine man
can do almost all of the things the sailors pic
tured here can do
That seems impossible. but actually THIS
MECHANICAL MAN CAN SHOOT GUN,
TELL COLORS, OBEY SPOKEN COMMANDS,
TELL THE TIME OF DAY AND EVEN TELL
WHAT TIME THE SUN WILL COME UP To-
MORROW MORNING
Marvellous, BUT TT CAN'T THINK, it can't
play, it can't laugh
The thing that makes the robot most tragic
of all is that it cannot laugh. Said Voltalre,
THE little good have done is my best work.
When / am attacked fight like devil;
l yield to no one, but at bottom l am good
devil and 1 end by laughing"
voltaire known as 1.-THE laughing philoso-
pher" in his DICTIONNAIRE PHILOSO-
PHIQUE created character who says. our
God Who has hidden love our enemies and
suffer evil without complaint assuredly has no
mind that we should cross the sea to go out
and cut the throats of our brothers because
murderers in red clothes and hats two feet
high enlist citizens by making noise with two
sticks on an asss skin
III AUGHING lions must come" said Nietzche
and then voltaire came, "annihilated with
laughter"
Voltaire could laugh because he had no ex-
allied idea of his own Importance! We can
laugh when we carefree as children out
when we grow older and feel that the world
weighs heavily upon our shoulders we are care
worn.
Said he, 1--WE know nothing of first principles.
TT Is TRULY EXTRAVAGANT TO DEFINE
MINDS AS TO KNOW
PRECISELY WHY GOD FORMED THE
WORLD, WHEN WE DO NOT KNOW WHY
WE MOVE OUR ARMS AT WILL l do
not know how I was made, and how I was
born. did not know at all, during quarter
of my life, the causes of what saw, or heard
or felt have seen that which is called
matter, both as the star Sirius, and as the
smallest atom which can be perceived with the
microscope; and do not know what this mat
ter is"
II is not meant at all to suggest that you
laugh foolishly, grow like vegetable tor
robot but that you find in thinking whole
some occupation, which makes it possible for
you to laugh at your own doubts and uncer-
tainties
There is vacant laughter which is lack of
intelligence Voltaire tells this in fiction in the
story THE Good Brahmin.
Saws the Brahmin. 'I have been studying
these 40 years and find that it has been so
much time lost believe that am COM
posed of matter, but have never been able to
satisfy myself what it is that produces thought
/ am even ignorant whether my understanding
is a simple faculty like that of walking or di-
eesting, or if 1 think with my head in the same
manner as / take hold of thing with my
hands.
.-HE story continues, and another character
says:
THE same day had conversation with an
old woman, his tthe Brahmins) neighbor
asked her if she had ever been unhappy Tor not
understanding how her soul was made? She did
not even comprehend my question She had not,
for the briefest moment in her life, had a
thought about these subjects with which the
good Brahrnin had so tormented himself. She
believed in the bottom of her heart in the meta