Motion Picture Magazine, May 1914 (1914)

Musings of- the- PmoToplay Philosopher i Cicero, Demosthenes, Nero, the Ca;sars, Charlemagne, etc.? How little we know of how these men really and truthfully looked, of what they wore, and of their hahits and customs. Our historians differ, and every now and then some new historian comes along and says that Nero was not a bad emperor, that Hannibal was not blind in one eye, that Homer was not a beggar, that iEsop Mas not a negro dwarf,,etc. And how easy it would lie to teach history by means of pictures. History is really only a record of the great men who have lived. They mark the way like milestones on the road to progress—from Alexander to Csesar, from Cesar to Constantine, from Con- stantine to Charlemagne, from Charlemagne to Napoleon; and how easy it would be to tell the whole story of the birth of civilization by means of Motion Pictures. Think of the volumes that have been written about the battles of Waterloo and Gettysburg, no two alike, and how easy the story could have been told by a battery of cameras under Red Cross protection. The Morning Tribune, of Tampa, Florida, seems to have an Answer Man who ranks close up to our own, as witness the following question and answer that appeared in a recent issue of that paper: Q.—During the year just ended 6.380.000,000 nickels were spent in this country at the Moving Picture shows, or .$319,000,000. This vast sum would have purchased 300,000 homes for people in ordinary circumstances, or nearly 80.000 good-sized farms. How about it? A.—Yes, and, on the other hand, those 0,3SO,000.000 nickels would also have bought 2,12C,G60.f><><> drinks of whisky, which would have caused sorrow to 5,000,000 mothers and unhappiness to 3,000,000 wives and deprivation and suffering to 10,000,000 chil- dren—if they had not been spent at the Motion Picture shows, where they bought clean, wholesome and educational amusement and made millions of men, women and children happy. J* Goethe asks, "Is not the world full enough of riddles already, without our making riddles too out of the simplest phenomena?" They say that poor old Homer died of chagrin because he could not expound a riddle pro- pounded by a simple fisherman: "Leaving what's taken, what he took not we bring." Poor Homer—no wonder he died. Aristotle and Philetas were also painfully perplexed about the famous sophism called, by the ancients, "The Liar": "If you say of yourself, 'I lie,' and in so saying tell the truth, you lie. If you say, 'I lie,' and in so saying tell a lie, you tell the truth." That reminds me of an experience: I rented one of my rooms to a young lawyer who promised to pay me $200 for the year as soon as he won his first case. I waited a long while, and, finding that he did not win any cases and did not intend to pay, decided to sue him, reasoning thus: "If I win, the judgment of the court will be in my favor and he must pay. If I lose, he will have won his first case, and must pay, according to the terms of his agreement." On the other hand, the young lawyer reasoned thus: "If I win the case, the judgment of the court will be in my favor, and I will not have to pay. If I lose, I will not have won my first case, and hence need not pay." This is a strange piece of logic, and quite <7||, seductive. The smartest men in any community are those who live on their wits. Only the very smart can get along on such small ^^f\ capital. 119