Lanterna Rally

Author: Forbes Winslow

Publisher: Forgotten Books

Published: 2015-07-15

Total Pages: 710

ISBN-13: 9781331467090

Excerpt from Journal of Psychological Medicine and Mental Pathology, Vol. 13 It is recorded of Heimdall, the warder of the Scandinavian gods, that the subtlety of his ear was so great that he could hear the grass growing in the meadows, and the wool on the backs of the sheep. There is a segment of society who, lacking this acuteness of sense and perception, deny or doubt the progressive intellectual and moral growth of the nation. They cannot trace this growth from day to day; nay, so far as their observation extends, the nation appears to be, if anything, deteriorating. This, it is said or implied, may be gathered from the experience of a single life-time. Whom have we now comparable with the mental giants who lived in the days of our childhood? When did society ever exhibit such signs of rottenness at the core as it now does? The policeman culls his choicest criminals freely from the most favoured classes - nay, even from the elect among them; and Sir Cresswell Cresswell enacting, as it were, the part of Asmodeus, unveils before us almost daily a picture of our domestic morality - a picture of the inner workings of the moral life of society, which is abnormal in the highest degree. These objections are about as pertinent as if a farmer were to deny the progressive development of his crops, or the thickening of the fleeces on his sheep, because he could not mark distinctly from hour to hour, or day to day, the growth of each individual blade of grass or corn, or of every lock of wool; or if, as he advanced in experience and knowledge, and became more apt in distinguishing defects or diseases in his fields and herds, he were to conclude, that therefore these defects and diseases were on the increase; or if, finally, he were to assert that the farming of his childhood and of his forefathers was more rational than the present system. The farmer knows that the splendid beeves which traverse his meadows are not the result of one generation's development; that the crop does not come to maturity coincidently with the tilling of the ground and the scattering of the seed; but that its growth and ripening are matters of time and season. And so of the moral and intellectual growth of nations. This is not a question of a life-time, but of generations. He who thinks that he may mark off the effects of mental culture on a race year by year, is in a state of ignorance as deep, but, truly, not so happy as that of the child whose imagination being warmed by the wondrous adventures of the glorious Jack surnamed of the Beanstalk, throws a bean out of the window when it goes to bed at night, expecting when it rises in the morning to see the plant grown even up to the heavens. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.