Life — September 27, 1900 — page 9: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

-LIFE-: 249 Some Remarks on Sanity. ODERN life ts 80 carefully organized along Insane lines that sporadic cases of more or Jess violent sanity are inevitabte, and that the persons afflicted with this dreaded ailment are the cause of much anxtety to thelr friends and relatives Is not surprising, because all the colossal fortunes and great successes of the present time are duc to one or another form of Insanity. To what ts the great wealth of the Standard Ut Company due except to man’s folly tn not following Mistresa Ford's example and “burning day- light *? We sit up half the night and sleep halt the day, and Rockefeller pockets the profits that would not be pos- alble 1f we rose with the sua, at Giemige ND if ail the other great fortunes be examined they will be found to have originated in the same way. More- over, the men who take advantage of these various forms of tosanity are themselves aMicted with a most curiously Insane desire to possess millions of dollars that will never: be of the slightest use to them. By bearing these facts In mind we can readily understand why the mass of tho people who consider themselves fortunate because they are {n accord with modern life are 80 shocked and horrified ‘when they hear of anyone who has really become sane. But for fear they should feel moved to do something for the care of such persons, I propose to show what sanity really ts, rye) Le : PENCER'S defintuon of perfection does not include rant- ty, possibly because most of his followers are a little off, He sas: ‘erfection {8 @ state of correspondence with environments.” This sounds very plausible and profound, bata man might fulfil ts requirements and attll bea slave to pepsin tablets and other forms of faith cure, A state of true sanity and per- fection not only demands a correspond- ence with environments, but also with contents, To my mind,a truly sane man 4s one that can eat a square meal and then lle down in the sun and be happy. This sounds very trivial, but Jet us con- sider what @ man must give up to put ft to the test. IRST, he must leave the city and live tn the coun- try where he mas Ile in the sun without having the bastinado administered by a policeman Second, he must dine tn the daytime so that he may Ile tn the san, but why proceed ? These two points are enough to show that he must give up both busl- ness and society, and only a man who ts violently sane will do that, But although sane persons give up the glorious struggle for things that they do not need, there are still many things that they enjoy in their own simple way. Peace, content and intellectual growth mean as much to them as worry, greed and the accumulation of useless mililons do to our great men, For that reason it 1s not cruel to leave them alone. Hesldex, 1f molested they might develop into reformers, and then what would Vecome of us If they gained the “you CALL YOURSELF AN HONEST MAN, HAMEY, AND YET TRY TO PASS THAT OFF AS A REAL ANTIQUE.” power to put thelr startling convic- i tions into practice? P.MeA, 1 AM AS HONEST AS I CAN AFFORD TO BE, Ol, EXCELLENCY !