Page 2
University Daily Kansan Thursday. Nov. 19, 1850
To the Occasion
But this was expected at the outset. Students have not risen to any occasion this year, and there was no reason to expect them to concern themselves with a trivial matter like their fundamental rights to equal treatment under the law.
Jim Austin, student body president, criticized student apathy concerning the student disciplinary problem at Tuesday night's All Student Council meeting.
A discussion of the weaknesses in the system of handling disciplinary actions followed. One representative observed that perhaps the only persons who care about the problem are the staff members of the Daily Kansan.
From what we have observed of student interest in the issue, we must assume that the representative is right. The great majority of KU citizens just doesn't seem to care.
Perhaps if one of them was sentenced to hang, publicly, from one of the trees on the Strong Hall lawn, he (and possibly his roommate if they shared living expenses) might question the soundness of the judicial body that issued the decree.
Anything short of this, we fear, would meet with the usual disinterest of all concerned. In any event, a man so sentenced could not count on the campus citizenry to protest in his behalf. KU students will not be aroused by anything that does not affect them directly.
We are thinking of something along the lines of a mass trial with all the deans and faculty sitting as judges. Every student would be a defendant.
The outrage that fires them to action must be personal. What we need is an issue touching every man and woman on this windy hill.
The charge: Indifferent attitude toward the world.
The verdict: Guilty.
The sentence: Thirty days at hard labor; the work to take the form of interest in one's fellow men.
Such a sentence would inflame every student. Against this, we have no doubt, they would revolt.
—George DeBord
An Editorial Feature
Darwinism Dissected
By Jack Harrison
One hundred years ago this month an English naturalist and biologist, Charles R. Darwin, published a book which had a profound and lasting influence on biology, philosophy, economics and numerous other fields of knowledge.
The small green volume created a sensation among scientists, clergymen, educators and laymen. Darwinism, as set forth in the book, was founded on the doctrine of "natural selection."
His book, "The Origin of Species," appeared Nov. 24, 1859, and the entire edition of 1,250 sold out that day.
Deflating Ancestry
The novelty of Darwinism is not in the theory of evolution, but in an explanation of a probable cause of evolution so clear and convincing that it removed the theory from the sphere of speculation to that of practical life.
Darwin deflated man's ego by theorizing that our ancestors were apes and chimpanzees. He questioned the belief in a special creation of each species. He recognized a geometric ratio in reproduction of organisms, and understood the resulting struggle for existence through which inferior individuals are eliminated.
Darwin's father was a physician and tried to steer his son into medicine or the clergy. But young Darwin's interest was in natural science. While a student at Christ's College, Cambridge, he became acquainted with Henslow, the professor of botany, who did much to mold Darwin's dominant qualities and to shape his career.
In December of 1831 Darwin
jumped at the chance to go along on the surveying voyage of the H.M.S. Beagle. During the 5-year trip to South America and some southern islands, he tirelessly gathered data and amassed one of the world's greatest collections of fossils, rocks, plants and animals.
After 1842 Darwin lived in a country home in Kent, where he carried on experiments, collected a library and wrote his books.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS By Dick Bibler
As early as 1834, Darwin sought to explain the diversity in animals having the same ancestry. He conceived that "by patiently accumulating and reflecting on all sorts of facts that could possibly have some bearing on the matter, some light might be thrown on the matter of the origin of species." This became the chief object of his investigation.
Early Start
— AN IF YOU JOIN OUR SORORITY—YOU WILL HAVE BENEFIT OF EXCLUSIVE OUTSTANDING PLEESE TRAINING.
To the end of his life he continued his painstaking and elaborate research into the facts of nature.
Darwin was an amateur geologist when he left England on the voyage of the Beagle. When he returned he had no equal among naturalists in firsthand knowledge of the living, changing world.
But the trip impaired his health and he had to live a sheltered life. He confided his growing theory to private letters and notebooks.
In 1858 he received a letter from a plant collector, A. R. Wallace, outlining ideas on evolution that coincided precisely with his own. The joint papers of Darwin and Wallace were presented before the Linnean Society on July 1, 1858. A year later Darwin filled in the details with his "Origin of Species."
Evolution Accepted
The theory of evolution became firmly established in the scientific world largely through the teachings of Thomas Huxley, Thomas Hooker, Fritz Mueller and Asa Fray. Following the lead of Darwin. Sir Francis Galton developed a theory of eugenics. Hugo De Vries advanced the theory of mutations, and brought to light the long obscured but valuable research of Gregor Mendel on heredity.
Spencer believed that the mainspring of progress in the social sphere was free competition. "Rugged individualism" and "laissez-faire" capitalism, which developed from this theory, became common to the American society.
Herbert Spencer, another Englishman, developed a philosophy of evolution. His ideas were termed "social Darwinism." He applied the principles of "natural selection" to the activities of man, and added "survival of the fittest" to evolutionary phraseology.
Religion In Arms
The conflict with Fundamentalist religion was perhaps the most violent reaction to Darwinism. Many theologians and a few scientists rejected the theory of evolution as 'the latest form of scientific infidelity.' The publication of Darwin's The Descent of Man in 1871 brought squarely into the foreground the issue of man's place in the world. The battle raged for several decades and has never been settled.
In the 100 years since Darwin published this book on evolution, the repercussions of the advancement of his theory have continued.
Editorial Photo
What, us worry?
(See related editorial.)
By M. K. McKinney Assistant Instructor of English
BEN-HUR by Lew Wallace, Bantam Books. 50 cents.
This is an abridged edition of the story as it appeared first in 1880. A cursory computation shows that the original comes to about 250 thousand words and that this abridgment comes to about 150 thousand. Most of the exposition is rewritten anonymously, and the dialogue is left intact. I do not feel that the story or characterizations are hurt, and I don't believe that the buyer is misled, for the book is plainly labeled "abridgment."
WILLIAM WYLER, the director of MGM's movie based on this story, wrote the introduction. It serves to introduce the dramatization and is in no way critical.
"Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ" (its full title) is one of the classics of American literature that used to be read in high school. Boys and girls used to read "Snow-Bound," "Evangeline," "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," among others, and the story of the house of Hur at the beginning of the Christian era belongs with those just mentioned.
THE STORY OPENS with the meeting of three Magi on their way to Bethlehem to find "one born King of the Jews." The story of Ben-Hur now starts with his imprisonment on a Roman galley; the enmity of Ben-Hur, the Jew, and Messala, the Roman; the discomfiture of the latter in a chariot race; the healing of Hur's leprous mother and sister by Christ; and the vision that the new sect now has of the better relationship between God and man.
This is one of the books that are often read for the first and only time in childhood. I was surprised to see how well the story has been retold and that it could still hold my interest. If you want to have a cheap introduction to the moving picture, this is a good way to get it. If you want to read the story as an example of post-Civil War fiction before the great realists had their effect, then don't get this Bantam book; get a Harper's edition as Lew Wallace wrote it.
Dailu Hansan UNIVERSITY
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912
Telephone VIking 3-2700
Extension 711, news room
Extension AL, news room
Extension 376, business office
Member Inland Daily Press Association. Associated Collegiate Press. Represented by National Advertising Service, 420 Madison Ave., New York N.Y. News service: United Press International. Mail subscription rates: $3 a semester or $5 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the University year except Saturdays and Sundays. University holidays, and examination periods. Entered as second-class matter Sept. 17, 1910, at Lawrence, Kan., post office under act of March 3, 1879.
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Jack Harrison ... Managing Editor
Carol Allen, Dick Crocker, Jack Morton and Doug Yocom, Assistant
Managing Editors; Rael Amos, City Editor; Jim Trotter, Sports Editor;
Carolyn Frailey, Society Editor.
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
George DeBord and John Husar ... Co-Editorial Editors
Saundra Hayn. Associate Editorial Editor.
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Bill Kane Business Manager
Ted Tidwell. Advertising Manager; Joanne Novak. Promotion Manager;
Ruth Rieder, National Advertising Manager; Tom Schmitz,
Circulation Manager; John Massa, Classified Advertising Manager