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About The Hesperian / (Lincoln, Neb.) 1885-1899 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 15, 1893)
THE HESPERIAN Yet, should we reckon liberty and manhood less than these, And .slight the right of the humblest between our circling seas, Should we be false to our sacred past, our fathers' God forgetting, This banner would lose its lustre, our sun be nigh his setting." Grand as are tho results of patriotism al ready achieved in this country, wo have not reached our ultimate goal. There is more to bo done. Modern thought has reduced the plan of industrial perfection from a vague, chimorical outline to a definite struc ture Ono hundred yours ago there was but an exaggerated, almost superstitious, notion of an ideal social democracy. To-day wo havo tho complete architectural design. America has been at work upon tho founda tion for many years. Tho corner-stone must be, as wos prophesied long ago, tho stono that the builders rejected. Tho world has trusted to its own knowledge and skill and statesmanship until human endeavor has gone as far as it can unaided. We havo attacked Nature in hor very strongholds, and forced her socrots from hor, ono by ono. Human energy, in tho material world, is conquering every obstacle in its path. To-day, with pulses quickened by victories already achieved, it moves confidently on to final success. With this tremendous forward movement of tho industrial world, tho intellectual and spiritual must keep pace. Wo miibt bo hard at work trying to harmonize human law with tho divine. That Golden Rule, "Whatso ever ye would that men should do to you do ,yo oven so to thorn," wo must be ablo to declare is on trial in tho hearts of thousands up and down this land, who labor and sweat for daily broad. For tho brain and heart must keep up with tho hand or that greatest curse of humanity will bo ours irresponsible power. Havo you soon a mechanic more skilled with tools than any of his fellovs, who understands complex machinery, whoso very brain is a machine, oxquisitely adjusted to tho perfect accomplishment of automatic duties? Havo you admired him for his skill and thought him the typo of industrial por- foction? Thoro are hundrods of such men in almost ovory community; and though some aro true typos, many of thorn illustrate perfectly this very evil of irresponsible power. The hand is indcod skillod but there is no heart back of it. How to get tho woekly stipend and how to spend it aro tho absorbing questions that shut out all higher considera tions. No thought hero of intellectual de velopment, no thought of country, or of follow-mon, or of God only of self; an industrial giant, an intellectual and a moral dwarf. Tho growth of individualism, so perceptible in our modem life, is a legitimate result of a growth and exorcise of patriotism. This solf dovolopmont, however, is but tho first stop. The theory of individual rights, so trium phantly established in 1775 and again in 1SG3, loads on, in tho evolution of humanity, to tho spirit of fraternity the brotherhood of man. Social equity, tho relations of industrial to political life, and most imperative of all, the relation of individual to individual, are the questions that cry to-day for a solution. They cried out at Homestead, when mis understanding, ignorance, greed, fanaticism, met in deadly struggle. Thoy cried out when Jay Gould died, leaving an accumula tion of wealth beside which tho troasuros of mediaeval Vonico would palo. A cry, not because ho called that wealth his and grasps it ovon from the grave, but because ho amassod it regardless of his foi low-man's neods and claims, and disposed it without a sign that ho recognized any brotherhood in his humanity. Each day thoro goes up to heaven the cry of misery and suffering wrought everywhere in the earth by tho unthinking intollect and tho hardened spirit upon our brothers tho miserable. All things and all thought aro compre hended in those three nature, man, God. Natural laws aro simple, harmonious, un yielding; human laws, conflicting and com plex; divine laws, infinite, and difficult for human comprehension. For five thousand years men have been patiently seeking tho if i'
