Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 100, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 April 1919 — WRONG IDEA OF GREATNESS [ARTICLE]

WRONG IDEA OF GREATNESS

By Ns Means Always Achieved by Those Who Have Made a lie Noise In the World. We make bold to say that thereto a general misconception in the minds of people throughout the world as to what really constitutes a great life. Unless a man or a woman has been in the public view with whatever service was rendered, unless bls or her picture has been in newspapers and books, unless, in short, they have “made a noise,” we do not consider that the Ilves they led were great lives. This is not only a harmful misconception; it is a mistake and’fts consequences are, from a moral point of view, extremely vicious. Suppose you aye walking in the fields or in the forests and you come across a strange kind of bug or insect You are curious to know what it is. Well, you can secure a book tn almost any public library that will tell you just what you want to know. That book was written and compiled by some man who did nothing bls whole life long but study bugs, cataloguing them, learning their tribe and origin and the habits of their existence. " Other men have spent their lives in equally humblo capacities, but adding always to the world’s sum of knowledge. The drug that soothes your pain, the spectacles by which you renew your worn-out eyes, the fire you. cook with and that warms you—these and millions other of your blessings and delights were wormed out of nature’s Sebret storehouses for you by patient students whose names you do not know. These are the great lives. These are tiie lives that have blessed the lives of all who followed after them. And the men and women who led «ch lives were groat people though they Went down to their graves unhonored and unsung.