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Show -4- I Order ihe Main Thins Order, according to the old saying, is heaven's first law. But, in truth, all law, 'whether Jn heaven or earth, is no more nor less than order. We speak of creative genius, but what is it but the knack of making things fit? The inventor originates nothing, ho brings things Into right relations. The man who made tho first steam engine en-gine did no more than bring vapor and metal together, lie established order between two tilings that had before been of no kin. The architect who put up the Wool-worth Wool-worth building was a dancing master who knew how to get stones and steel girders to group in due figures and poses. Stones lie rough in quarries, trees grow in the tangled wild, copper and iron are scattered in ore veins and all the units of sand, glass, paint, plaster, plas-ter, tile and cement arc hero and there in confusion upon the earth; enter the human brain with its conception of order; or-der; from it flow disposing thoughts with volts of compelling will, and it is as if a dispersed army had heard tho trumpet call and had fallen in by companies com-panies of tens and hundreds, each "with its captain, each keeping step, finding its place, moving in campaign by tho plan upon tho field marshal's table. The poet is an expert In order, giving giv-ing to airy nothings "a local habitation habita-tion and a name," seizing the fugacious fuga-cious wisps of feeling, tho flashing wings of passing fancy, tho half-felt thoughts and dumb and covered strivings striv-ings of the soul, and arranging them in rhythmic syllables. The housewife is order's mistress, contriving housohold peace and comfort com-fort as she makes tho bed, by smoothing, smooth-ing, spreading, arranging, and as she makes a dress by measuring and matching, and her tasty dinner is also but her captaincy of varied foodstuffs that In their unrelated disorder were inedible. God in naturo through the myriad lives combines earths and liquids into energetic cells and thus produces organisms. or-ganisms. What we call life is merely an orderly impulse Imposed upon looso auitlor. We ascend the steps of lifo by order; or-der; wo descend to death by disordor. Education or culture Is getting one's forces and Ideas Into some coherent plan. The uneducated man is the confused con-fused man. Tho trained mind is ono where there is no litter; nil Is packed and pigeonholed; things are in their pincc. Civilization is tho Droeress of men toward order. The process of conscience is toward an ever more perfect, a .wider order, until at last the race shall "find itself." it-self." Our notion of duty proceeds from self-defense to family pride, thence to tribal adherence, thence to patriotism or national feeling, and at last to humanity or the world consciousness. con-sciousness. All wars mean tho struggle of mankind man-kind toward that eventual order of the whole. Competition merges at last Into cooperation. co-operation. Liberty is found to be Impossible Im-possible except under tbc reign of law. Humanity is growing from a condition condi-tion of contesting individuals, competing com-peting groups, warring nations, Into a vast coordinated machine whorein every part shall nourish and minister to every other; even as the onk tree, by its divine and mysterious potency of life, takes the disorganized particles parti-cles of the earth and raises them into one majestic trunk, with branches and leaves. If order bo heaven's first law, it is the last goal of earth. FRANK CRANE. (Copyright, 1920, by Frank Crane.) |