Life — July 31, 1919 — page 19: what you’re looking at

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

Uncle Sam: IT’S WONDERFUL WHAT AN EDUCATION ABROAD WILL DO FOR A FELLOW! to spare at the post, but the command- er wouldn't sell him any, because he knew that explorers could not live off the country up there, and would not be responsible for aiding a fool under- taking. So Stefansson had to go four hundred miles out of his way to get matches from someone not so well in formed; but he got them, and he and Anderson went as planned, and ex- plored and lived on the country for the next four years, and added very greatly to human knowledge. Lodge and Borah and Brandegee and the other wise men of Washington are much like the commander at Herschel Island. They are loath to furnish matches to help out the adventurous Wilson, who new theories of sub- sistence. Being educated men, they know too much to furnish forth any such invitation to disaster. kut Kut, ete. F course, education and the body of accumulated that it rests upon, are indispensable to human progress. When Henry Ford admitted that he knew nothing about Benedict Arnold, and had been instructed on that subject in court, he said: “T could find a man who could tell me all that in five minutes.” There must be knowledge such persons available for the use of active imaginations, not too much en- cumbered by facts to work. Stefans- son was not ignorant of Arctic explo- 195 ration. He knew had studied it more and much proved, than the more about it, as events commander of the Just so Mr. Wilson has studied the present needs of Europe and the world nearer to than Mr more about them. He at all an example of the unfurnished mind that His mind is abundantly furnished, but it is post at Herschel Island. Lodge, and probably knows is n has room in it for a new idea not sealed. It can still entertain nov- elties, and see new truths The obstructive Republican minds in Washington are probably too much committed to professional opinions; to wit, the opinions of professional Re- publicans. They are responsible for the keeping alive of the theory of Republican infallibility and its comple- ment, the theory of Democratic fool- ishness. The thing like that of the orthodox medical men towards Christian Science and the kindred movements, 1 of orthodox clergymen towards the current spirit- ist activity, The doctors may doubtless most of them do—that there good deal in Christian Science, but they they see it does not work in well with understand it imperfectly, medicine, they dare not indorse it, so The current for the most part they let it alone. ministers feel that the spiritist. activity with its astonishing ntomatic may output of writings is of a censuming interest, but as guardians of accepted religious truth they cannot take much notice of novelties in super- naturalism until they have won stand- ing acceptance. The are real and serious. Medicine is an institution; is the Church, so is the Republican party. On each of them rests the obligation to see to it that its constituents do not wander in irregular paths, are not be- guiled by false doctrine, and do not This obliga- Chureh responsi! ies of institutions The faculty of helieve more than is so. tion—the same that got the into its embarrassing complication with Galileo—makes them all timid. They can’t go out after new truth, nor even meet it halfv They must wait un- til it has won its fight and established its respectability. Then they can pat- ronize and applaud it. It the rash, the simple, the indecorous and the unschooled that the new light is through seems to work its w comicbooks.com