Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 August 1884 — Echoes. [ARTICLE]

Echoes.

“There are in thia world,” quoth Goethe, “so few voices and so many echoes;” and it is one of the most discouraging signs which can be observed of any time, that it is an age of echoes. There are so few men in this world who have the intellectual power, of thinking for themselves good, honest, original thoughts; and it is by far so much easier to echo the idea, the motives and the conduct of others, that we have got in our day to be largely mere echoes of echoes, or echoes again of these echoes of echoes. Tradition mocks some old fashion, which in turn mimicked something lying farther back, until the best of us find temerity to claim originality for our most sincere thought or action. ——— ■■