HAS MAN DEGENERATED?
The Advent of Man--Care of the Stock Raiser--Mental Degeneration
Makes It Unpleasant for an Original Thinker--Original Thinkers of
the Ancients--Methods of Healing--Failure of Allopathy--Primitive
Man--Evidences of Prehistoric Man--Mental Dwarfage.
THE ADVENT OF MAN.
The exact time when man's foot appeared on the earth, no record shows. A
knowledge of his advent might be profitable. The unwritten history of
the human races with the genius or lack of genius, might to us be an
open book of knowledge. As it is not supposable that the mind of man has
just become observingly active in the last few centuries, absolute
evidence of purer and deeper reason than we have been able to present,
stand recorded on the faces of many valuable "lost arts" which we have
never been able to equal. Is it not very reasonable to suppose that the
powers of mind have wonderfully degenerated from some cause?
CARE OF THE STOCK RAISER.
The stock raiser carefully preserves the best and most healthy of the
males and females of his flocks and herds for breeding purposes, that
their offspring might be healthy and well developed, for the purposes
for which he raises them. As a result he raises stock from the poultry
house up, with marked improvement in form, strength and usefulness.
Should he be foolish enough to kill off all the healthy and well
developed males as they appear in his herds of cattle and other stock,
for one or two centuries, would any one with average intelligence
suppose that the standard of animals would or could be kept up, by
breeding from the unfortunate stock, that had been pierced through the
lungs while fighting with more powerful animals. If for breeding
purposes he would save calves, colts, lambs, pigs, goats or any other
young males to breed from, that had had a leg frozen off, one or both
eyes plucked out, necks and ears torn by panthers, what would you think
of the man's sanity?
On this line we would ask what has been the procedure of all nations?
Has it not been to select the strong and healthy males, drive them out
to the field of battle, destroy a million or more of the strongest men,
as our war of the sixties shows. Since that war closed the fathers of
our children are mainly the crippled, worn out, and degenerated physical
wrecks, with the assistance of the refused, who for lack of physical
ability were barred from entering the United States' service. Such
physical and mental wrecks are the fathers of the children born during
the last thirty years. Every healthy young lady who married and became a
mother after the early sixties, had to select a husband from a war or
hereditary wreck. From that degenerated stock of human beings our
asylums are filled, and the beams of the gallows pulled down by the
weight of the bodies of those mental dwarfs. Run this train of reason
back for a few hundred or thousand of years,--this degenerating force,
bearing upon the offspring, and is it a wonder that we have physical and
mental wrecks all over the country?
MENTAL DEGENERATION MAKES IT UNPLEASANT FOR THE ORIGINAL THINKER.
Now if we have been mentally degenerating, killing our best men back for
a few thousand years time, and still have a few left who are fairly good
reasoners, what was their mental powers then, compared with now? They
could think from native ability; we only through acquired ability by our
methods of education. Should an original thinker occasionally appear
from the crippled and maimed, he will have much that is unpleasant to
contend with, unless he is generous enough to credit the cause to an
effect produced by the lack of mental and physical forces in the sires
just described. A man or woman who is able to reason, cannot afford to
wear out his or her physical and mental forces by spending time in
tiresome discussions with such blank masses, who are very fortunate to
have intelligence enough to make a living under the methods that require
the least mental action.
It would not be manly nor lady like to allow a feeling of combattiveness
to arise and spend your forces on such persons. Pre-natal causes have
dropped them where they are, and a philosopher knows he must submit to
the conditions, and he is sorrowful in place of vengeful and
vindicative, and all that is left for him to do is to trim his lamps and
let the lights defend themselves.
ORIGINAL THINKERS OF THE ANCIENTS.
On this line we have much to think of. Anciently they did think: Great
minds existed then, as is evidenced by the architecture displayed in
constructing temples and pyramids. As in philosophy, chemistry, and
mathematics, they stand to-day as living facts of their intelligence. In
some ways we are equal and even surpass the ancients. Before the
establishment of religious and political governments, national and
tribal creeds, to sustain which the powerful minds and bodies of
thousands and millions have been slain and their wise councils
prohibited by death. Reason says under the circumstances we must kindly
make and do the best we can in our day and time. No doubt their religion
was better than ours, before they began to fight about their gods and
governments.
METHODS OF HEALING.
Some evidence crops out now and then that their methods of healing were
natural and wisely applied, and crowned with good results. As far as
history speaks of the ancient healing arts they were logical,
philosophical, good in results and harmless. It is true enough that we
have great systems of chemistry that are useful in the mechanical arts,
but very limited in their uses in the healing arts. In fact, a very
great per cent of the gray-haired philosophers of all medical schools,
unhesitatingly assert that the world would be better off without them.
These conclusions are sent forth by competent and honest investigators,
who have tested all known methods and medicines, and carefully observed
the results from a quarter to a half a century. Let us call it "a
trade," as the use of drugs is not a science.
The author will now say, the health hunter in a majority of cases, when
he administers drugs, gives one dose for health and nine for the dollar.
As it becomes necessary to throw off oppressive governments, it becomes
just as necessary to throw off other useless customs, without which no
substitute has ever been received.
FAILURE OF ALLOPATHY.
Allopathy, a school of medicine known and fostered by all nations, drove
on with its exploring teams; gave up the search, went into camp and
builded temples to the god who purged, puked, perspired, opiated, drank
whiskey and other stimulants; destroyed its thousands, ruined nations,
established whiskey saloons, opium dens, insane asylums, naked mothers
and hungry babies, and still cries aloud, and says: "Come unto me and I
will give you rest. I have opium, morphine, and whiskey by the barrel. I
am the god of all healing knowledge, and want to be so recognized by
people and statute. I do not wish to be annoyed by Eclecticism,
Homoeopathy, Christian science, massage, Swedish movements, nor
Osteopathy. I do not like Osteopathy any better than I do a tiger. It
scratches me and tears away all my disciples. I cannot destroy it. It
uses neither opium nor whiskey, and it is impossible to catch it asleep.
It scratches us, and has scratched our power out of four states during
the last twelve months, with no telling where it will scratch next time.
We must prepare for more war, I have heard from my scouts that on its
flag the inscription reads thus: 'No quarters for allopathy in
particular and none at all for any schools of medicine farther than
surgery, and war to the hilt on three-fourths of that as practiced in
the present day. The use of the knife in everything and for everything
must be stopped; not by statute law, but through a higher education of
the masses, which will give them more confidence in nature's ability to
heal.'"
PRIMITIVE MAN.
It is reasonable to suppose that the mind that constructed man was fully
competent to undertake and complete the being to suit the purpose for
which he was designed. After giving him physical perfection in every
limb, organ, or part of his body, it is reasonable to suppose, that at
that time, he gave him all the mental powers needed for all purposes
during the life of his race, and with that perfection in the physical,
it is supposable he approached very nearly to intellectual perfection.
He was a mathematician, not by collegiate process, but by native
ability. He did not have to take a course in a university to study
chemistry, because of the fact that he was a chemist when he was born.
Possibly he could speak or understand all languages spoken by the human
tongue, from the powers of his mind, which occupied a pure and healthy
physique. In a word he was well made and fully endowed with all the
physical and mental forces necessary to the whole journey of his life.
Now a question arises: "When did he begin to degenerate physically and
mentally?" Let us reason some on this line, which seems to be a rather
solid foundation, and as history is young itself, and has imperfectly
recorded only such events as have transpired during a few centuries,
with records imperfectly preserved.
EVIDENCES OF PREHISTORIC MAN.
We see evidences all along the journey of prehistoric man's life, though
the being and his bones have been mostly obliterated; we see close to
his bony remains the stone axe, the flint-dart. We find acres of ground
in many places close to mounds and caves, with countless millions of
slivers that have been scaled from flints and formed to suit war
purposes; while the many bones that are found in caves, heaps and piles,
indicate that many thousands fell in mortal combat then and there.
Possibly they were old in the skilled arts of war at that day. Their
great and powerful men, who should have been parents of the coming
generations, were slain and destroyed and the conquered became the
captives and slaves of the more powerful, with all opportunities for
mental development suppressed. Other nations and tribes willingly
entered the bloody fields of battle, with nothing to report but the
death of the best physically formed men, and leaving the propagation of
the race or races to be kept up by those who were left behind as
unqualified to go into battle, for lack of strength of either body or
mind.
This process of destroying the mentally and physically great has been
kept up to the limits of our history's record. We have to go to schools
about one-half of our time in order to cultivate and stimulate our
mental energies sufficiently well, that we may follow the ordinary
business pursuits of life.
MENTAL DWARFAGE.
Without worrying the patience of the reader any further, we will ask him
if it is not reasonable that during all the past thousands of years,
that men have fought over their gods and governments, has it not
produced the mental dwarfage from the causes he has had to face? Our
professional men are only imitators of one another. They must spend
years in school because of a lack of native ability. This is our
condition, and we must make the best we can of it. Most of our learned
men, so-called, at the present day, stand upon heaps of mental rubbish.
You seldom see in an editor's columns any evidence of mental greatness.
He clips, quotes and sells his wisdom. He takes up some hobby,
religious or scientific. He lauds his own religious views; his
scientific ideas he wishes embalmed for the use of future generations.
His law is _the_ law. His medicine is God's pills, notwithstanding he is
the laughing stock of all who know him. I want to be good to them. I
expect to be good to them, as they are suffering from the effects of
pre-natal causes, thrown upon them by their ancestors for thousands of
years. By those causes they have been possibly wounded worse than I
have, and I do not expect to spend any time in combats with mental
dwarfs; political, religious, or scientific bigots. If I can
successfully run my boat over the riffles of time, I shall credit it to
good luck, not native ability, for I, too, feel what they should,--the
deep plowings of mental dwarfage, that is the result of killing all the
great and good men for ages.