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About Hesperian student / (Lincoln [Neb.]) 1872-1885 | View Entire Issue (May 5, 1884)
THE HESPERIAN STUDENT. N- good, but it is the class of men in them that dctermine.4 this result. But go about over the country and look at the laborers as'a class, whether they are intelligent, provident men, capaple to be intrusted with such an organization, and you will see that there is much reason for the author's position. the U. S. does to the eastern, the contrast would cease to be a contrast. Students perhaps imitate more than any class of men. Being thrown on their own resources they feel as if they were afloat and catch at every straw within reach. Ambitious of distinction, they seize on every semblance of greatness. If they hear that a great man gets up early in the morning, they do likewise, imagining this is a step toward the goal. Of course this is a plesant delusion, but a clam cannot become a whale however much it may imitate. The ques tion of greatness sifts down to this, is or is not brain there? We hear fine talk about perseverance making up for brains, but suppose perseverance is not there? Perhaps it does not occur to some that this is a gift as well as brains. Everyone has his own work which he is elected for and he can do no other. If the el ements of greatness are in us, we will become great, not by imitating other men, but of ourselves. To use an illustration, there is a niche for each one of us which no one else can fit into, nor can we fit into any other. Let other men and their customs alone, do as your genius commands you. The only benefit we can get from great men is inspiration to work out our own destiny. In speaking of the Cincinnati riots the "Spectator" comments at length on the popular indifference to murder to be found in the United States and quotes figures to show that there are more than three times as many deaths from violence in proportion to popu lation here as in England. It is not possible to justly compare two countries, one of which has long been occupied in all its parts, and of which the other con sists very largely of new settlements. Experience has shown that each country must pass through a period of anarchy in which human life is to a great extent disregarded, and we cannot expect the west ern half of our country to be an exception. A small number of bravoes with private grave yards for their friend's accomodation should not be allowed to put a stigma upon the respectable part of the nation, es pecially if they confine their operations to those of their own class. The inhabitants of the older parts of the U. S. have no more pleasure in being cut off before their lime than the most "cultured" of the "Spectator's" constituency. Murder statistics of this country should not be taken in a lump when com pared with those of England. We think if the latter country would include Australia, which bears about the same relation to her that the western portion of There in something irresistably comic in the posi tion of a presidential candidate of the paesent day. For most of the other offices m the gift of the people the proper way of the aspirant is to allow his friends to announce his willingness to take up the burden of public service and then keep it before the people. With the office of president however every thing is different; each man who thinks of the White House as a residence must ostentatiously occupy himself with some business entirely unconnected with poli tics and devote all of his spare hours to keeping his name out of the papers. If by any chance he should be mentioned as the right man for the place he must rush into print with denials and explanations that other and more pressing duties prevent any possibility of his candidacy. Now that the cam paign is practically begun we see Blaine seizing the pen and plunging deep into authorship, Arthur longing for private life, Grant with an oppor tune sprained ancle, Tilden sick or well as necessity may point, and a general air of preoccupation or di lapidation. Now why is this thus? Why should a man destroy his chances of having an official head simply by announcing that he wants one. Evidently there is something rotten in the state of public mor als when only men who are supposed not to want office are looked upon as fit to have it. Modern tendencies indicate that if Gulliver had lived in the next generation or at the latest, in the twentieth century, he would not have been obliged to seek a country in the air for a people whose sages were all mathematicians. Readers of Swift will re member that in Laputa a man's standing in society was determined by his ability in unraveling tangled problems. Each success in transforming the un known into theknown,(points this satire moredirectly at the science of to-day. It becomes more and more true each year that none but mathematicians can at tain the greatest success in any department of science. It would seem that "figgers" are the only things, with the possible exception of the father of his coun try that "never lie," and can therefore be wholly de pended on. Every branch of knowledge began with a mere clasification of observed phenomena In time facts are united into principles or laws and with the exact sciences these are finally deduced from mathe matics. Astronomy when it first appears is no more than a record of the movements of heavenly bodies; later comes the period of theories finally ending in a time when the motions of stars and planets are mat ters, not of observation but of prediction. The his . ories of Chemistry, Physics and Mechanics are essen-