We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
132 MUSINGS OF "THE PHOTOPLAY PHILOSOPHER"
Let us all get together for the general uplift of the Motion Picture business. Let the cry be, "Baise the standard!" Millions of people are yet to be won, for millions yet remain in ignorance of the possibilities of the Photoplay. Let us get together. Concentration of effort is the thing. When one divides one's energies to cover varied fields, the chances are that no one spot will be covered to best advantage. We are all after the same thing — the censors, the manufacturers, the exhibitors, the writers, and even the detractors. Let us have team work — -all pulling together to one purpose. Sheridan once remarked that if all the fleas in his bed were unanimous they could have pushed him out of bed. We all want the Motion Picture industry to grow and to prosper. It can only be done by raising the standard. Dont say "It is good enough." Nothing is good enough unless it is your best.
"A censor," says Gibbon, "may maintain, but he can never restore the morals of a state. It is impossible for such a magistrate to exert his authority with benefit, or even with effect, unless he is supported by a quick sense of honor and virtue in the minds of the people, by a decent reverence for the public opinion, and by a train of useful prejudices combating on the side of national manners. In a period where these principles are annihilated, the censorial jurisdiction must either sink into empty pageantry, or be converted into a partial instrument of vexatious oppression." All of which points to the fact that the people themselves, after all, are the real censors and the court of last resort. In the long run the manufacturers give the people what the people want.
"Think that day lost whose low descending sun views from thy hand no worthy action done." Tiberius used to say, at the close of a day when he had failed to accomplish anything useful, "I have lost a day!" I fear that there are not many of us who figure it out that way. If we have done what we had to do, and no more, if we have made money, if we have kept out of trouble, if we have paid our rent and our grocer, most of us say, "Hooray! Let's go out and celebrate."
I am beginning to think that there is only one kind of genius — the genius of industry. As Mirabeau once said, "Impossible is a blockhead of a word." Given the average intelligence and plenty of industry and stickto-it-iveness, and almost anything is possible. Once in a while a man hits upon some great invention or discovery, and we at once misname him a genius. As Buffon says, "Genius is patience, and patience is genius, the result of a profound attention directed to a particular subject." Hogarth's definition was practically the same: "Genius is nothing but labor and diligence. ' ' Both Alexander Hamilton and Hugh Miller confessed that the only genius they possessed was that of patient research and application to the task in hand. Most of our great men have made similar remarks, and the longer we ponder the matter the more do we become convinced that genius is not some great, God-given talent, but merely energy, application, concentrated effort, industry.