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Newspaper Page Text
m l ALU OFF THE EARTH! EVERYBODY CRAY! Prof. 'Filassin May be right, if he did say it at the Eugenics conference. Prof. Filassin is a mad doctor treats lunatics you know and his notion of the end of the world is that everybody will go ma'd. This may be incurable optimism in a man who depends on the alien ist practice; or he may be doing the way of most specialists con tracting the disease he treats; or he may be more than half right. Madness consists in an inability to distinguish between notions which have realities as their objects and causes, and notions which are just notions. The man who sees a snake in the meadow prob ably sees one. The man who- sees a maroon snake with peacock green stripes around him, and a telescoping crest terminating in a diamond tiara lit up with crimson electric, lights probably sees a figment of his own imagination. The one sees a snake, the other a notion. The one is presumably 'sane. The other is permanently or temporarily either partly ort wholly mad. If madness should be come epidemic, we might all get it and starve. For the mind Which pursues food, shelter and clothing must be able to distinguish ac curately between things which are inside the head, and those out side. Epidemics of madness have been known. The Crusaders were a sort of epidemic madness. The Children's Crusade, which con sisted of the marching toward the Holy Land of thousands of chil dren,, proves this. Wolf-madness ran through communities in the middle ages in "which troops of men ran on all fours and howled and ravened like wolves. Other hordes whipped themselves with scourages, lacerated their flesh, built pillars of stone and sat on thera fpr years. Just what form of madness will carry us- off if the professor's prediction comes to pass is, of course, impossible to say. The one most likely to infect us, however, would seem to me money-mad- 'ness. This is very prevalent now in certain circles. It makes men ,maim and kill their employes for the sake of "money. It causes them to oppress thousands for gain. Its badge is Greed. Its vic tims have the delusion that by getting inordinately rich they will Be happy. This idea is an internal snake, and not one in the green meadow of nature. It has, no objective actuality to verify it. It is "shown by all human experience to be fallacious. , This insanity did more than 'any thing else to ruin the civiliza tions which have fallen. It may justify Prof. Filassin's prophecy. 'But as long as we have the power to reason about the thing, there is some hope. In the meantime, Prof. Filassin is pretty sure to hav a-gqpd practice, . t i iji!uljiMaSMMMMliSMMSfiiSi