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EDITORIAL. PAGE The Atlanta Georgian THE HOME RAPER
THE ATLANTA GEORGIAN
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Some Day Babies Will Be
Born Wise.
In Ages to Come Human Beings at Birth Will Know More Than
Any Man Knows Now.
(Copyright. isi» >
The most helpless and Ignorant thing in the world is a new
born human being.
The most independent and wise thing in the world—m pro
portion to its ability—is a new born mud wasp, or newly
fledged sparrow.
That is because the human being is just in the beginning of
its development, whereas the mud wasp, the ant and other in
sects have reached the highest development of which they are
capable.
The saddest thing in the education of human beings is the
fact that each child must begin at the beginning and learn every
thing for itself.
Each little baby learns to walk, learns to avoid the fire,
learns to talk. The mind starts its life as a blank page, and
everything must be written upon it. The child can not even
learn by hearing from the father and mother of their mistakes.
Each child must make its own mistakes, and can be taught only
by experience.
But will that last forever?
When you see the lower forms of animal life giving birth
to creatures fully equipped and independent, can you not be
lieve that when the human race, practically just born on this
planet, shall have lived here for a few hundreds of thousands or
millions of years, that the human child will be born with all the
material knowledge stored away, and have no work to do ex
cept the discovering of unknown truths, working in new fields?
We base this editorial upon an article by Sir William Ram
say, in the current number of Hearst's Magazine. We advise
intelligent, thoughtful readers to get the magazine this month
and every month. It is published for those who are interested
in realities, those who are capable of thought.
In the article referred to, Sir William Ramsay describes
both in the animal world and among human beings indications
of a certain power of mind, of knowledge bom in the newly
created animal, apart from all teaching or experience.
He says, concerning the inhabitants of Burmah:
“Cases are known where a child, born of parents living in a village
not their own, to which they had migrated, wao able to recognize peo
ple, and to ‘r©m ember' events which had taken place in the native vil
lage of his parents, of which he could have had no direct knowledge.
Is it possible that a memory for particular events is sometimes inher
ited ?*
Then he says, of certain observations made upon swallows:
“Their nest was under the eaves; and for long, the parents fed
and attended to their young brood. The day arrived for
them to leave their nest; and without any practice, each
fledgling dropped out of the n«st, flew backward and forward, and
without the least hesitation entered the nest, just like an old bird. The
wonderful power of control of muscles, of guiding motion, and of cor
relation of brain and eye must have lain in the germ of these birds
until the time for their use arrived. Examples of the sort might be
given by the thousand; although the on© mentioned is perhaps partic
ularly striking."
It is extremely likely that the little boy of Burmah, a child
bred for ages along the same limited line of thought, should
have certain ideas and associations before birth strongly im
pressed upon it, and that these should be transmitted and ap
pear in the child without any teaching.
There is no doubt that the children of savages recognize of
their own accord the danger in poisonous reptiles and other an
imals to which the civilized child would be indifferent, except af
ter the experience of a bite.
In the animal world the fact that the brain of the new an
imal is born with exact, wonderful knowledge is not disputed.
And that fact is of intense interest to human beings who hope
that the human race itself may develop one day in such a
way as to have the children born with a ready-made education
in excess of that which they now possess after years of school
ing.
Suppose that a child could come into this world wise in
proportion to its possibilities, as does the child of the mud
wasp.
No baby mud wasp ever saw its own mother. The eggs
are laid, and the mother who lays the eggs dies before they
hatch.
Each new mud wasp begins its career as did Adam in the
Garden of Eden, with nobody back of him so far as he knows.
When the mud wasp is ready she selects a good place to
’ay her eggs. Then she goes off and selects a fat caterpillar.
She intends that the caterpillar shall feed her young wasps
when the latter hatch out. She puts that caterpillar beside the
eggs that she has laid, covers up the eggs and the caterpillar,
and goes away, leaving food for the young, unborn wasps, as
some human mother might go out for a day's work leaving
bread and butter on the table and saying, “Johnny, eat that
when you get hungry.”
The wonderful thing- is that the mother wasp does not KILL
the caterpillar. If she killed it, it would be decayed and useless
by the time the young wasps arrived.
The mother wasp seizes the caterpillar and carefully stings
it just back of the head, between two of the little rings that form
the caterpillar's body.
This stuns the caterpillar, makes it impossible for it to
move or struggle, but does not kill it.
And while the wasp eggs are hatching, the caterpillar, ren
dered helpless, but not killed by the poison, lies there ALIVE
waiting for the little wasps to hatch out and eat it.
Presently they hatch, they eat it, and scatter.
The wonderful thing is that each of these wasps, never
having seen the thing done, never having had lessons from
its mother, or from any school-teacher, goes out when the time
comes, lays her eggs, finds a fat caterpillar, stings it exactly in
the same scientific way, and puts it away with the eggs, never
having been told how to do it.
What a fine thing it would be for the children of human
beings if they could be born with knowledge of that kind. Some
of them are born WITH UNUSUAL KNOWLEDGE
Some have musical power, which means that the brain be
fore birth developed knowledge of harmony.
Some children can compose music correctly when they are al
most too young to read.
Other children have a phenomenal mathematical faculty
and can do “sums” that would puzzle their elders.
So far, man s brain is really too big for his body.
He was a timid, frightened monkey-man, running away
from everything, developing his brain rapidly in order to make
hup for physical weakness. He has been a thinking man only
Continued in Last Column.
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Another Race Spoiled
Mere Exaggerations
WINIFRED BLACK
Writes on
A Woman Next Door
You Choose Your Friends, She Says,
Because You Like Them, and Like
Their Kind, Not Because Somebody
Else 1 hinks You Ought to Like
Them.
I READ a brilliant story by a
brilliant writer the other day.
Did you happen to read It, too?
It was about a woman who
lived down “behind the tracks,"
in a country town. She was a
woman who flaunted the streets
in a gorgeous hat and expensive
gowns. She wore bangle brace
lets that jingled and rings that
sparkled, and high-heeled slippers
and “open-worked” stockings,
and the men grinned sheepishly
when she passed, and nudged
each other, and the women looked
the other way and pretended they
didn’t even see-her.
i One day the woman from “be
hind the tracks” bought a house
uptown and moved into it—a
neat, pretty little house, with a
garden and trees, and she dug in
the flower beds and watered the
lawn and put out hanging bas
kets. and she went to market in a
little checked gingham, and she
looked wistfully over the fence
when the neighbors went by, but
nobody ever spoke to her at all.
One night a baby was taken
sick in the neighborhood and the
woman from “behind the tracks"
saved its life. The next day she
stood out on her porch and wait
ed to see the baby’s mother go by.
And the* baby’s mother went by—
and did not see the woman from
“behind the tracks” at all. and
the woman from “behind the
tracks" went and sold her
little new house and the
garden and all. and went
back “behind the tracks” to live—
and all the people in the village
pursed their lips and said. “She’s
gone back —they always do."
What Did She Expect?
Good story, wasn’t it, and a
good slap at the narrow-mind-
| ed little mother, who wouldn’t
I make friends with the woman who
had saved her baby's life?
We need a few such slaps as
that, we women: and yet
I wonder what the woman from
’’behind the tracks” expected
when she bought the pretty lit
tle house and the garden, and
went to live among decent peo
ple?
Did she think they would get
out the band and meet and greet
her at the doorsteps, or what?
You choose your friends be
cause you like them, and like
their kind—not because somebody
else thinks you ought to like
them.
If the woman from "behind the
tracks” had come to the village
from somewhere else and no
body knew a thing about her, do
you think the neighbor women
w’ould have liked her anyhow? I
don't.
She wasn’t their kind; never
was, never eould be. She be
longed to a different world, and
every time she turned her over
blonded head and every time she
opened her good-humored, too
easily-pleased mouth, and every
time she laughed her rather
coarse laugh, she would have told
what she was, and no woman of
any fineness of perception could
have been mistaken in her for a
minute.
No, I don't mean what she had
been. That isn’t what would con
cern a kindly woman who was
trying to decide whether she
wanted her for a neighbor or not.
Some Day Babies Will Be
Born Wise
Continued From First Column.
for a short time—probably not more than two or three hun
dred thousand years.
Unlike the ants, the wasps, and the swallows, he has not
had time yet to develop knowledge, make it thoroughly his
own, and TRANSMIT it.
But there is every reason to believe that in time to come
the baby will be born with all the practical knowledge that it
requires, just as the young swallow and the young wasps be
gin life thoroughly educated.
When the time comes, each individual will have a highly
interesting career—each being born knowing everything that
is generally known, and each being able to devote the whole
of life to acquiring NEW knowledge and making original
research.
The difference between the mud-wasp and the human baby
now is that the wasp is born knowing everything that it needs
to know—and never learns anything more.
The baby of the human kind is born knowing nothing,
and learns a good deal.
In days to come, when the baby is born with knowledge,
there will still be a difference between it and the wasp, the ant,
and the swallow, for born with the things that it must know in
order to live comfortably, the human baby, unlike its animal
associates on the earth, will start out ADDING to human knowl
edge—which, in turn, by slow processes that go on within us,
will be handed down to the new generation. 4
By WINIFRED BLACK.
I mean what she Is. A gingham
dress doesn’t change the beat of
a woman’s heart; a garden hoe
doesn’t turn her from a coarse,
easy-going, blunt-hearted per
son to a gentle, delicate, lovely
woman, does It? I don’t believe
it.
A Lesson From Home.
Once I had a maid —a strange,
silent, stubborn girl with bine
eyes, so hard that they were like
a flint. She had a strange, meas
ured walk and a strange, con
trolled voice, and she always act
ed as if she thought some one was
watching her.
One day I saw her in a blue
print dress, of peculiar cut and
shade, and I knew —she was a
reformatory’ girl. I’d seen her
before, at the reformatory.
I didn’t say a word. I treated
her exactly as 1 had always treat
ed her. but one day she W’as gone
and she left a lettet for me. In
it she said many things. One
of them was this: "You know
me; don’t you? I believe you
do. 1 thought I could be differ
ent, but I can't. You’ve been good
to me, but I ain’t happy here.
1 ain’t comfortable, so I’m going,’’
and gone she was, back to the
people with whom she was "com
fortable.” poor thing. Back Jo
the people who were like her and
who had her ways and her point
of view. I was sorry, but I didn’t
go after her or try in any way
to reach her.
Perhaps I should have—l’ve
often wondered—and yet there
were the children. Would it have
been exactly .safe?”
Selfish—protecting my children
at the expense of a poor thing
who was trying to make herself
over.
Perhaps; but those children are
mine. They’ are my business. It
is my affair to keep them safe
as long as I can. My own door
step I must keep clean, and then
If I have time and strength I
may help my neighbor about
hers. That’s the way it looks
to me. I wonder if I am right or
wrong?
What You Really Are.
The poor thing from "behind
the tracks" didn’t belong in the
neat little street uptown. She
was no more in place there with
her loud laugh and her bleached
hair than the timid little woman
who lived beside her would be
in place in the ranks of a march
ing army. I don’t blame the
neighbor women for looking the
other way. Honestly, now, I don’t.
And the high-heeled, expensive
slippers and the open-worked
stockings and the gorgeous hats
and the flashing rings—she had
had all these things while little
neighbor turned her blue cash
mere and trimmed it with black
velvet one year and with cream -
colored lace the next, trying to
make herself look pretty to the
one man she loved. How could
the poor thing from “behind the
tracks” think she would never
have to pay’ for all that?
After all, though, it isn’t what
you used to be that counts. It
isn’t what you would like to be.
either; but what you really are.
and no change in dress or in
housing or anything else will
change that. I wish it would.
How pitifully I wish it would.
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