A Man's Value to Society: Studies in Self Culture and CharacterHillis, Newell Dwight
Philosophy
A Man's Value to Society: Studies in Self Culture and Character
Hillis, Newell Dwight
Character; Self-culture
Recently the story has been told of a burglar who accidently
discharged a magnesium light connected with a kodak on the shelf. The
hour was midnight and everyone in the house was asleep. But the kodak
was awake and at work. Frightened by the sudden light, the thief fled,
leaving his spoil behind. But he also left his face. The next day in
the court the kodak convicted him. Thus the new science is causing
each man to stand in the center of an awful photographic and
telegraphic system which makes an indelible record of man's words and
deeds. No breath is so faint that it can escape recording itself; no
whisper so low, no plan so secret, no deed of evil so dark and silent.
Memory may forget--but nature never. Upon the pages of the physical
universe the story of every human life is perpetually before the judge
of all the earth.
It is deeply interesting to see how each living thing bears about in
its body the story of its degradation, or the history of its rise and
exaltation. Even in things that creep and crawl, the whole
life-history is swept together in the animal body. The ship barnacle
began its career with two splendid eyes. But it used its vision to
find an easy place upon the side of pier or ship. Giving up
locomotion, it grew sleek and fat, and finally its big eyes grew dull
through misuse, and now they are dead. When the squirrels left the
forests in the west and journeyed out upon the open prairies, they
began to burrow in the ground. Finally, for want of use, they lost all
power of climbing. Among the birds the lazy cuckoo began by stealing
the nest another bird had built. But it paid a grievous price for its
theft, for now when the cuckoo is confined by man and wants a nest of
its own it toils aimlessly, and has lost all power to make for itself
a soft, warm nesting-place.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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