Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 January 1883 — The Fools Who Advanced Ideas. [ARTICLE]

The Fools Who Advanced Ideas.

It has often occurred to me that a man is a fool who advances ideas of which the world has not previously heard. We are an ancient family. Look at Noah. He worked a lifetime through dry weather on a boat. Every one who saw him and his family had a laugh at them for being fools. The rain came and saved them, though. Then there was Moses, the man of bulrushes, who would not be the son of the Princess, and instead lived for forty years among those who would have none of him. The crown of folly, I may say, and I say it without thought of sacrilege, belongs to Him who walked with twelve apostles, a stumbling-block to the Jews, and a vexation to the Greeks. It is hard to draw the line between folly and wisdom; they dovetail together and wind in and out to such an extent that it is almost impossible to tell where the fool leaves off and the wise man begins. And then, the fool of to-day may be the philosopher of to-morrow. Franklin was a fool, when with kite and key he drew electricity from the clouds and was knocked headlong. That man was a fool who first started across the ocean in a steamship. At the time he was plowing the waters a wise man of Edinburgh sat in his studio and wrote an essay incontestibly demonstrating the impossibility of the feat. The fool, however, arrived safely and was a fool no longer. His foolishness, it seems, depended on his geographical location. Columbus —there was a fool to be proud of. He persisted in sailing out to the edge of a world that every one knew was flat.— Judge Tourgee. The Ithaca, N. Y., Ithacan observes: Our druggists report that St. Jacobs Oil goes off like hot cakes.