Motion Picture Story Magazine (Aug-Dec 1913)

ynOSlNGS OJ=*Tfle PMOTOPLAY PfllLOSopM^ Occasionally look over your habits, but dont overlook your superstitions. Being not yet fully civilized, we are all more or less superstitious, and a superstition is an obstacle to progress. Primitive man was a slave to superstition, and savages everywhere are even today afflicted likewise. Superstition is akin to ignorance. There is no such thing as the supernatural. The socalled supernatural is only the natural not yet understood. r Among the good books that have come to my reading-table are ' ' Old Age Deferred,^' by Dr. Arnold Lorand, published by F. A. Davis Company, Philadelphia, price $2.50 net, and "Art in Short Story Narration," by Henry Albert Phillips, published by the Stanhope-Dodge Publishing Company, Larchmont, N. Y. Dr. Lorand 's book is a masterful treatise on the causes of old age and its postponement by hygienic and therapeutic measures, and it is written in popular language that all can understand. An appropriate quotation on the title page, from Seneca, is, '^Man does not die; he kills himself." This book should be read by young and old: by the former to preserve their youth ; by the latter to regain it. Mr. Phillips' book will prove of great value to all .short story and photoplay writers, and its value is enhanced by an introduction by Rex Beach. Mr. Beach has written two. stories for The Motion Picture Story Magazine, and Mr. Phillips writes one every month, and our readers are familiar with their scholarly work, even had they not read numerous other stories by these great writers in various other publications. Mr. Phillips' new book is quite the equal, if not the superior, of his previous one, "The Plot of the Story," and it is with pleasure and confidence that we recommend it. It is a handy little book, printed in large type, and the reader will not be troubled as was Macaulay, who read Plato in a ponderous folio sixteen inches long by ten broad, which weighed twelve pounds, and which was printed in antique Greek type on 1,400 closely printed pages. Mr. Phillips has that rare faculty of saying a whole lot in few words and of putting it -up in neat packages. We all have big ears for that which favors our vanity, and small ears for that which discredits us. It should be just the reverse, for, if we are to improve, we must correct our faults rather than gloat over our virtues. As the Spanish maxim runs, "When you hear anything favorable, keep a tight rein on your credulity ; if unfavorable, give it the spur. ' ' The anti-suffragists are complaining that the hand that rules the world is no longer rocking the cradle; that the women who want to vote are not giving the same attention to the duties of home and maternity that they used to give. If the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, there seems. to be no pressing necessity for votes for women ; yet, on the other hand, if the ladies really want to vote, perhaps they have just as much right to do so as have the men. If the world is to be ruled, it should be ruled by all — ^provided they are competent to rule, and who dare say who is and who is not competent? Themistocles maintained that his infant son ruled the whole world, and proved it thus: "My infant son rules its mother; its mother rules me; I rule the Athenians ; the Athenians rule the Greeks ; the Greeks rule . Europe, and Europe rules the world." ^^h^-^^ 108 i'^^^^2^^^<^€^^^^^