Editorials from the Hearst NewspapersBrisbane, Arthur
Philosophy
Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers
Brisbane, Arthur
Editorials; Essays
Look, as a human being, at other human beings. There they sit or
stand or hang. Some chatter, others scowl, fret, fume, complain,
brag, grin or otherwise express the strange emotions that move us
here.
They are all ghosts, as Carlyle tells you, imprisoned for a time
in coverings of flesh, and a car packed full of real ghosts
passing over the earth on their quick journey to the grave ought
to stir you. ----
The giggling shopgirls whose life of misery is still a joke to
them--blessed youth!--should interest you deeply. And the negro,
too, with a tired black face, resting for the next day's
slavery--slavery on a wage basis, but slavery all the same.
Possibly you despise his thick lips. But those lips are carved
on every sphinx in Egypt's sand, and if you could go back far
enough you would find the ancestors of that negro, before the
days of the Pharaohs, laying the foundations of your religion and
locating the stars in heaven. At that time your forbears were
gibbering cave savages, sharpening bones and gnawing raw flesh.
When you see the negro on the opposite seat, the ill-starred one
who has gone down in the human race while we have gone up, think
about him, study him, speculate as to his ultimate end--and your
own. Don't merely say to yourself, "That's a plain negro," and
go on chewing gum. ----
The pictures that flash by your car windows should help you to
think.
The train rumbles over the switches, and in the dusk a swinging
lantern tells you that a man is at work, guiding you safely when
your work is done. Can't you take an interest in that human
atom, representing the Power that swings our tiny sun in space,
lighting us on our journey toward the constellation Hercules?
----
A black steeple is outlined against the dark-blue sky of the
evening. That is a finger of stone, built by man to point
everlastingly toward Infinite Power. It now points "upward." In
twelve hours--as the earth slowly turns--it will be pointing
"downward." But there is no upward or downward in the carpentry
of the universe. In the twenty-four hours, as it turns round
with the earth, that steeple points toward all the corners of
space, and constantly it points toward Eternal Wisdom and Justice
in every corner. ----
This is tiresome? All right, then we'll stop. But whether we
tire or interest you, remember:
As a man thinks, so he grows. Think, study, use all the hours
that separate your croupy cradle from your gloomy grave. Those
hours are few.
CULTIVATE THOUGHT--TEACH YOUR BRAIN TO WORK EARLY
Two centuries back a young man of twenty-three sat in the quiet
of the evening--THINKING.
His body was quiet; his vitality, his life, all his powers, were
centred in his brain.
Above, the moon shone, and around him rustled the branches of the
trees in his father's orchard.
From one of the trees an apple fell.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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