Page:Poet Lore, volume 4, 1892.djvu/603

 is equally employed by the tyrant and the philanthropist, the wise and the foolish, the religious fanatic and the coolest thinker, the honest, conscientious scholar and the shameless quack: the Press will serve, as it has ever done, the direst as well as the noblest purposes. Where, then, is the eulogized benefit to mankind? Who will vouch for it that this wonderful instrument for the propagating of ideas will at any time become the exclusive property of honest hands and serve good only?”

“To make such a commonplace remark a person certainly does not need the brain of Newton!” observed some one at the writers’ table.

At the same time cries of “Good!” were heard from the table of the military men. “The penny-a-liners have always been superfluous and useless creatures!”

“It is true,” my friend went on, “that Newton’s brain has existed but once; and having done its task, it can never appear in the same form again. But the mysterious gray matter of the human brain, which our physiologists look upon as the source of thought and the home of mental abilities, still remains the same in substance. Ideas spring from it, and human talents are hidden in it. For this reason, notwithstanding all the difference of ideas and faculties, the unknown laws which govern this mysterious process remain forever the same; in a word, logic is one and eternal. Who knows whether the brain of some farmer, mechanic, servant, or slave, long forgotten, if shaped under the same circumstances, laboring in the same direction, under like conditions as the brain of Newton,—who knows whether that brain would not have reached the same conclusions, or perhaps grander results, and much sooner than the brain of Newton?”

“No one will dispute a sentence so conditioned,” came from an unknown voice at the authors’ table.

“Why, then, that absurd worship of the so-called geniuses, when it is known that the same conditions under which this or that celebrated deed or work was done exist with thousands of others who do not even attempt performance?”

‘Bravo! bravo!” the noblemen applauded.