Victor Mapes

“ Which was more significant and important for the good of civilization—that countless millions of men and women, for countless generations, in Mexico and in Persia, talked and thought and exchanged ideas—or that one single individual, named William Shakespeare, had some ideas which it occurred to him to put on paper?
The brain effort of a single individual more significant for future humanity than the rise and fall of an empire! That kind of conception—dealing with something we know about—does not strike the matter-of-fact intellect as the height of absurdity. ”

“ Does any one claim, or imagine, that school-books contain much nourishment for the heart and soul, or the moral feelings, or love of beauty? Upon what grounds, does any one claim, or imagine, that such things are less important to the growth of character, and a cheerful disposition, and fine standards of conduct, than the training of the intellect? If we are perfectly satisfied that the method employed to train the intellect does not and need not interfere with a corresponding development of those other sides of human nature—that is one thing. ”

“ But I have never heard one single woman attempt to explain how it is that, with all the emancipation, and higher education, and scientific enlightenment, which has been placed at her disposal, modern mothers should fail to give their children a better training than ever, instead of a worse. Is it good for the children? No, of course not, they admit. Don't modern mothers love their children? How absurd! Every mother loves her children—more than a man can understand. Then why is it modern children don't receive proper training by their modern mothers? ”

“ The only trouble about the principle is that, as it deals with human beings, there is with this, as with other questions of conduct, that same unknown factor—the spiritual side of man's nature. One of the most fundamental feelings of manhood—true for a nation, as it is for an individual—is that it is right, sublimely and everlastingly right, for a man to fight for his wife and children, to fight for his home and native land, to fight for honor and to fight for right, as his conscience points to it. ”

“ The tenderness, sympathy, devotion of a mother, very surely and quickly open out the heart feelings of her child and meet with warm response. The more constant the companionship, the more constant the outpouring of affection on both sides, the more that side of the child nature grows.
And the more it grows,—with mother watching over it, helping and guiding, setting the example—the more it has to give to other people and things. It will love a doll, a kitten, a puppy dog, and show them the same sort of tender attention that it receives from mother. ”

“ No mother should ever say to a child, or allow it to imagine, that if it should be naughty or bad, or do this, that or the other, mother would cease to love it, or father would cease to love it. Such an idea is poisonous to the true feeling and conception of love, which should be cherished in every child by every mother. Mother should take pains to make the child feel,—and she should take pains to make father do so, too,—that no matter what it does, their love for it will never weaken or waver. ”

“ Then countless millions of people for countless generations have been left to lead their lives without a right understanding of life or death, the body or the soul, or the real purpose or design for which they were created and by which they will be judged? Only the few lucky ones who happened to be born and brought up in the one true belief can have the advantage of grasping the situation. To an impartial intellect, there would seem to be something about such an arrangement hardly fair or just to all the other countless millions. ”

“ We cannot forget his welfare, or his happiness, we do not wish to forget his welfare or his happiness, because through our sympathy and affection, the essence of another life has become inexpressively near and dear to us.
To a greater or less degree, this capacity for affection is inherent in human kind, from the lowest to the highest. It is a most precious human quality and it opens the gates of life to a sort of satisfaction that is infinitely bigger and finer and more lasting than anything that can be obtained from the mere gratification of selfish and material impulses. ”

“ Many of us, to-day, are disturbed and alarmed by the point of view and the behavior of people about us—especially the younger generation. Girls of good family are seen on all sides, who smoke and gamble and drink and paint their faces and laugh with scorn at the traditions and conventions which their grand-parents regarded with almost sacred reverence. The young men are worse, if anything, and as for the married people of the new era, what they are doing to the sanctity of the home and the bonds of matrimony might seem like a weird travesty of the teachings of the past. ”

“ Human sympathy causes us to delight in the joy of those we love, just as their sorrow saddens us. We like to give them presents, prepare surprises for them, devise ways and means of adding to their happiness. Such acts on our part are usually accompanied by a very sweet and lovely feeling of sentiment. Our hearts are warmed by the thought and sight of this good that is coming to those we love. Some cynical and shallow reasoners like to argue that such acts are only a disguised form of selfishness because, as we have a sympathetic share in the pleasure, we benefit by it, ourselves. ”

“ If the divine intention is toward progress and betterment and an ideal of right, why has the intention failed so miserably and repeatedly to be carried out? Why haven't I just as much reason to assume that the divine intention, if there be any, is the gradual corruption, decay and disintegration of the human being? Were the motives and behavior of the average man ever more corrupt, immoral and baser than they are to-day—all over the world? If we consider the results, where is the evidence of a constant betterment in man's spiritual nature? ”

“ Nobody will begrudge it to you, and you need not begrudge it to yourself. It is what distractions are for. It is also what the great majority of husbands and fathers and grandfathers have been doing since the beginning of time—working to the best of their ability for the good of home and family—content with their recreation, after the work is done?
How can any true mother in her heart and soul be so disturbed and misguided by intellectual enlightenment that she could be led to desert her eternal responsibility for the pursuit of selfishness—or the agitation of isms? ”

“ In our own country we are multiplying state-provided nurseries, schools, playgrounds, gymnasiums, colleges and hundreds of other substitutes for the homes and the home training that fails under the strenuous tests of present-day life. We are enormously attempting to train bodies and brains from the cradle to full citizenship. But with all our provisions and equipment we are failing to touch the real keystone of all character—the spiritual nature of man. We are teaching morality because it is morality, proved by experience to be expedient, on the whole, for a satisfactory career on the earth. ”

“ We all want the good things of life, as much as he does, and if we're in the majority, why shouldn't we have our share?
He didn't make the capital that's in this business, and he didn't have anything to do with making his rich father; and the money his father made, when you come down to it, was squeezed from men like us. If the world is supposed to be run by reason, and reason says the majority ought to rule, why shouldn't each one of us have an equal share with him? ”

“ Above and beyond these, will be a deeper and greater appeal to the most generous and noble intuitions of the heart and soul. There will be very little consideration for punishments, or rewards, or threats, or anger,—to force the human soul into submission of any kind; but there will be immense consideration for love of others and love of right, individual responsibility and self-control. Pervading and illuminating all, will be a blessed faith in the beauty and wisdom and purpose of the eternal mystery. ”

“ If a setting sun, or a harmony, or musical notes, appeal to my sense of beauty and give rise to a vague but delicious emotion of my inner nature, all the arguments of all the intellects on earth are powerless to alter the essence and meaning of that feeling, so far as my nature is concerned. To me that feeling of beauty is a fact, and it would remain just as much a fact, even if no other person in the world shared it with me ”

“ If we examine the Labor Union and the Closed Shop, and Strikes and Socialism and Bolshevism, and all those other kindred isms, we can see, readily enough, that the under side of them all is tarred with the same brush—self-interest, selfishness, greed, individual and collective, and reason, argument, excuse, more or less distorted and perverted, but more or less enlightened by the principles of modern Science, as they appear to the average intellect. ”

“ In view of the wonderful harmony and fitness of the countless processes and things which we see everywhere about us in nature, it is not strange that mankind seems always to have taken it for granted that a supremely wise and a supremely resourceful intelligence of some sort is responsible for it all. The beginning, the end, the scheme and purpose of so many miracles, extend into the beyond, the unknown, the incomprehensible. ”

“ Is there not in each and every one of us a deep-rooted desire, which is wholly in accord with conscience, to make good in the rôle which has been assigned to us in the mystery of creation? Does not each individual feel moved to accomplish something beyond the mere continuation of life? ”

“ For they, too, have in them the same mysterious spirit of you which you cherished in your son. And so, as you sit back, in old age, in brooding contentment over the young lives, so full of possibilities, you may reflect, in the sweetest way imaginable, that it is going on indefinitely, this essence of you and yours, on and on, to the end of time, fulfilling on earth the unfathomed but divine purpose of the all-wise Creator.
People whose interest in life is centered in self-indulgence and material pleasure, may regard with dread the approach of old age ”

“ Is it possible that right here may be the main and underlying cause of the so-called "demoralization" of the present generation? Is it possible that the "impossible notions" and the equally "impossible conduct" of the up-to-date young people which grandmother finds so shocking are traceable to this source? Is it possible that faith, honor, loyalty and other ideals and aspirations of man's better nature, are being neglected and corrupted by the methods of modern science and the rule of reason? ”

“ Has the rule of reason made husbands and wives any more devoted to each other, or to their friends? It has succeeded in providing a great many people with a telephone and an automobile, but has it succeeded equally well in providing them with generous feelings of self-denial and consideration for others? Or has its tendency, on the contrary, been rather to interfere with the spontaneous development of such feelings, by attempting to replace them by an analysis of human motives in which calculations of self-interest are made the prime factor? ”