Image provided by: Silverton Country Historical Society; Silverton, OR
About Torch of reason. (Silverton, Oregon) 1896-1903 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 8, 1900)
THE TORCH OF BEASON, SILVERTON, OREGON, FEBRUARY 8, 1900. True, but just as in Biology the to the d o m i n a n t r » ii .. results are not precise, yet they are Imperator A m oL ci’v i l r L l o certain, and so eobj'ect lo prevL on pies, such 'a s are now a b ^ f o I n .1 ■‘Il « herPeoples concerned. With- the maklngof them all individual- IMe . 7 ” 7 *he™ Wi" ** tr°°- “ ““ and provision. Biology cannot trol this earth the r illv f it to a. . 'i !■", * " ntganism, and con- The Republic therefore rests sol- foretell your death precisely to an »¡ve, and those only who under th i? peoplT affeeted '’" ’!!''! 'Vh'Vh CVery ’dIji "P0" ll"‘ ord,'r of all organic pe-’ple affected will have a part, evolution. Indeed the solar system hour, but it cau foretell your death law can survive in t l,e are those who make for .7 ® ' ’ | ? ' he. ' neVI,aW‘‘’ 8cien,ific and with its ba.... .. of centripetal and things which, if you do not •j -u i • i i resuii. .Nature amc co-operative benefit benefit of of their '-•"luiiunni ™ d s, centrifugal fo.ces in the orbits avoid, will certa.nly make your -non, n,on, co-operative the lower animals and - in social . , I ----------- . . . o <. I IV» ( I l n u d i l i s a v - of the planets, may be said to he death a dead certainty by a given nation and of all peoples. That is agery worked out its do,oh result» the ideal of those c e n tra liz in g and time. Its knowledge is not pre among modern goverments the on roughly and brutally, but as soon repelling.those intergrative and diff cise, but it is certain in its ly one that is “naturally selected” as mankind became conscious, so erent ia tiv e , tendencies which hold in facts, laws, conditions and re and which can survive aspartofour cial and intelligent, and even half in harmonious action apolitically sults, and so it is reliably accurate. civilized progress is the R epublic . civilized, no government hut a Re Federated Union—sustaining »and In a similar way this is true in So As Pai ne, Jefferson and W ashing public— that is, a public manage protecting its general functions and ciology. Its general laws and pro- ton said, the “ Republican Model” ment of the general affairs of the its individual members. Such is the cesseses, and concomitant and final must survive, and not only in form people for them and by their agents, natural balance which is at once the results are discovered. Those civil can long remain possible. Natural stay of starry systems,of the organ ized peoples who from choice or selection becomes intelligent and ic world, and of the peace and pro negligence allow themselves to be moral selection, which is then only gress of States and of Nations. borne on by the drifts or winds of the fittest, because the best selec their own greeds, passions and fan R epublics A lways in D anger . tion, and that by the fundamental cies, without regard to the healthy 1 he great danger to Republics is law of Evolution and Sociology is social and scientific relations toanc the inevitable. It will not be safe that the balance of their integra with the world they are really in, to pretend to forget this law, nor to tive and differentiative forces or and its other peoples, are simply stand up against it, nor to try to tendencies will not be preserved. sailors going it blind, or would-be beat it out of its reality by selfish If this can be done the Republic pirates following what will prove a subterfuges and idle prevarications. becomes practically immortal, and mirage of selfishness. If the family is, and will ever be the permanent, of nations and the peoples on this and the gieatest blessing of man planet are to end in making it any kind. For it is the sure guarantee thing but a Golgotha, or a human of liberty, independence, industry, slave-pen, we must begin to recog safety of life and property, general nize these natural laws of historical welfare, intelligence, and reasonable and social balance, co-operation and sociability, equality, fraternity, and evolution. The idea that we can go general progress under human it blind in the pursuits of averic- ious domination and not end in which is the “Hpaven” on this earth. disastrous catastrophe is unscien These beneficent results cannot pos tific—in a word, a childish illusion. sibly be permanently achieved by No empire has ended otherwise any other form of government. than in slavery, followed by “earth “The Republican Model,” as W ash ington phrased it, must therefore quakes” of revolution—and by the remain as the political ideal for all laws of evolution, every empire in time, to he ever better realized by evitably leads to those results and the successive stages of intelligent ends there. co-operative evolution. There is no mystery nor great ab But in Sociology and Politics, as struseness about this science, as in everywhere else, the most precious the case of the higher mathematics. things are the most difficult to keep Sociology is largely a descriptive —they are always liable to be lost science. Any one who patiently or stolen. So is it with a Republic; looks at the facts with common and when lost or stolen it seems sense and common intelligence, can ilmost impossible to be recovered. not fail to catch on to the laws and The laws of this science may not be Liberty like milk and quicksilver follow the way out. Let us try. as precise to the moment as the when once spilt seems gone for ever. The general law underlying the laws of the solar system,, but they Hence every Republican should domain of all living things—that is, are just as certain, and in the long live on the defensive outlook , and in Biology and Sociology, is the run as terrible if they are broken. never forget the words of Jefferson: simple law of assimilation, and Nor is there any doubt about them. “ Eternal vigilance is the price of consequent integration and im They were adumbrated b y th e“ laws Liberty,” and the still nobler words provement of the whole by the dif r>f God” of the old dispensation of T r " '° ---- ------- ----- - of Paine: “Where Liberty theology. Ever since the scientific' ideal8>towards an ever better is s not, ta te - ferentiation or individuation of its there is my country;” th at is, his to ’• new of mankind has come to the W,‘’ph parts into organs ever better per realize it there. For as long as forming functions for the benefit of ront, the Sociologists have been in there is a powerful despotism on the whole organism, which is at lympathy if not in name, Repub- earth no Republic is safe. Thus it once the resultant of, and the guar icane; Herder, Condorcet, and the dian of them. To Herbert Spencer American and French Revolution- was that Paine, as the Father of belongs the honor of best stating sts, then the Natural Scientists, Republics and of Republicanism, proclaimed its ultimate in the Fed and illustrating the law ’ of growth "omte and the Positivists, and last- eration of Republics, as the Grand y, the modern Evolutionists. As >rof. Louis G. Janes, of Cambridge, lass., has well pointed out, “ Dar rin, Spencer, Huxley, Haeckel, 'iske, Cope, Powell, and all of the lasters of evolutionary science in .8 higher evolutionary aspects” ave stood for this higher selection hich goes for the Republic. <*7“ n°.T ° n m,,8t mOre and ” ° re ! The language of Paine and Jefler- denve the.r just powers from the L>n Was indeed of their day, and so consen o t e governed , because , largely metaphysical; but it is only as the resultants of the co-operation necessary to remember that their of the varted parts and organs,that <.righte« WPre the c a t i o n , and 1», indi \ m t At,», of the social body, counterparts of social duties, and they can act only for its general that their “equality” was not one and common b e n e fit,- that is, for 0, n ature, but of political rights and t e ene t o a . | necessities. “ Equal as to their T hat is as Lincoln put it: “Gov- rights,” as Paine well puts it in the I