University of Maryland College Park - Terrapin / Reveille Yearbook (College Park, MD)

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the vexed question: there is a combination some- where where these forces will so act as to have as their resultant a power equal to the sum of the two elements. It is reserved for the Quixotic mind — the one not content with things as the3- are simply because they are so, but who wishes to subject everything to the criteria of truth before final assent is yielded to its worth. Old scholasticism held that truth could only be self evolved; that man could onl - be certain of just such knowledge as had for its basis innate notions of truth. It was reserved for the immortal quixotic Bacon to shatter the manacles which had held the human mind in subjection for thousands of j-ears, and bid it soar among the laws of the universe and become acquainted with them by his powers of observation. He first realized that — The works of God are fair from naught, Unless our eyes in seeing, See, hidden in the thing, the thought That animates its being. And, realizing this, he put his interrogation to Nature, and she answered intelligently his questions. He made it possible for Newton to announce to a listening but incredulous world the laws which bind the spheres to the paths, and at the same time guide a molecule in its vibration. These are quixotic minds; men who cut loose from the slaver) ' of conformity to type and dared to be quixotic in their day and generation. Every epoch in the history of the world has its birth in what is called quixotic action. How prone we all are to regard any action, on the part of anyone not conforming to our not ions of right or usual custom, as of such a nature as to be worthy of our ridicule and best efforts directed to its extermination. All this is wrong! A little thought will unmistakably demonstrate the fact that our only safety is in accept- ing conclusions reached by patient thought. Newton was once asked in what constituted his superiority to other men. His manner was marked by his usual humility; that he was not conscious of such, but if in any particular he was superior to other men, he could only account for it on the basis of palie7it thought. How few have this power? And those who have it, how timid they are, if their con- clusions reached are in any way antagonistic to the usual, accepted doctrines of the Church, State, or the still more imperious rulings of an arbitrarily con- stituted societj ' . Nothing so completely foils a man, and throws him back upon himself, m akes him timid in expressing thoughts which have been the result of long mental incubation. I say nothing so completeh ' terrifies him as the fear of what the world will say about it. T ' -uth is not his first aim, but rather, the other inconsiderable thought, of what will be thought of it. John Hampden was qtiixotic in the extreme, in the eyes of practical Englishmen, when he ofi ' ered up his 15

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pendentlj- would never have been given without the obligation to do so. Therefore it is claimed without the fear of contradiction that no man should inherit his belief in anything. Taking the world as it is at the age of maturitj ' , let him calmly weigh the con- ditions upon which solid judgment rests, with all the light the past will give, all the aid which the present affords, and with such prescience as he can summon, make the future pay tribute to his power in forming his views of all the various conditions of life. This is the only rational scheme; this the only sensible course for rational man. China is a nation of conformity to type, and with as unerring exactitude as the birds and other irre- sponsible things, her children build, sow, think, and live in their vocation as their fathers did. The Celes- tial Empire, with its teeming millions, with its almost infinite power for good, drags its weary course far in the rear of the car of progress. Innovation to them is a crime; a disease upon the body politic, against which the strictest quarantine is laid. Confucius is to them their past, present and future. America is tainted with this same conformity to type. The millenium is not yet here. Our religion and government are good, but we have not yet reached ideal perfection. Many Americans are jealous of any criticism upon their religion, customs or laws. Dickens ' American Notes in many particulars is exaggerated and I ' ar away from the truth, still, at the same time, every honest American can see running through his vein of satire, ridicule, and word-painting much that is true. One instance is sufficient. How far away from being true to nature is his picture of our House of Representatives? We have all been, no doubt, spectators of its deliberations; what do we think of them? Right here are formed laws which constitute the chart by which we are guided. Is it our opinion that dignity and gravity sufficiently charac- terize their deliberations? I am sure that we cannot be far away from Dickens ' own notion, in this one particular, to any nothing of others. Any man, sincerely and praj-erfully seeking for help, may abide in the assurance of perfect faith, with the light given, no matter how incompatible his con- clusions may be with those who are guided alone by the law of conformity to type. Metzrott, the shoemaker, Henry George and Bel- lam)-, each and all announce Quixotic doctrines. And why? Because their ideas are awaj ' from conformity to type, and still there cannot be found an honest thinking man who does not realize that the present principles upon which the basis of society rests and is accepted generally by the unthinking are radically wrong. There should be no conflict between labor and capital; these twin elements in every product of man ' s ingenuitj have no right to be warring against each other; symphony alone should be the result of their combination. Neither extreme will ever settle 14

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life rather than submit to unjust taxation. Pestalozzi and Froebel were regarded as quixotic when the} ' breasted the torrent of mediaeval notions and an- nounced the doctrine that children should grow men- tally, as they do physically, in a natural and pleasant wa}-. Assigned tasks beyond their years, long and tedious hours of confinement were, according to their ideas, monstrous impositions, productive of no good. They outlived the odium heaped upon them as the result of the announcement of their views, and to-day what was quixotic and notional in them, is the accepted psychological method of procedure in all early education. In conclusion, pioneers in new fields are the ones to whom the world will ever be in debt. Its present and future progress, if such it is to be, is to be bora of just such adventurous spirits. R. W. Silvester. i6