Propagandum

From this point of view, as a propagandum of political freedom, Freemasonry is worthy of a profound study, and also entitled to the gratitude and reverence of all good and benevolent men. It has contributed largely to the social improvement of our race, and to the establishment of civil liberty.

The two per cent theory as to interest, to be effected by an interconvertible bond, which has been taken up and made a propagandum by the Farmers’ Alliance and a platform by the Populists, was originated by one Kellogg, the author of a book entitled “A New Economic System,” which appeared probably as early as 1858.

In State schools religion is permitted and sometimes welcomed, but not as a propagandum. It is a guest on good behavior. It must be polite, careful, conservative. Cæsar dictates how aggressive it may be.

The Vigor of democratic polity is in democratic religion. So long as the American people would make their citizenship a privilege as against the rest of the world, they will be ridden over roughshod by domestic monopolies. For American citizenship is not a privilege; it is a propagandum.

In two directions then, material and money, the product of the wood lot is of high importance to the farmer. But in the majority of cases this part of the farm is far less useful than it might easily be made. This is true because the farmer does not study its productive capacity as he does that of his fields and pastures, and hence does not make it yield as freely as he might, with little or no additional labor, if he went about it in the right way. But the farmer has been told this before when forestry here was a propagandum. […] It was easy enough to tell the lumberman that this system was wrong, but the American lumberman is influenced by proof rather than propaganda.

Undoubtedly the primitive state of the psychology of abnormal mental states at the time of the miraculous discovery and transcription of the ‘golden plates’ of the book of Mormon had something to do with the ease with which such a propagandum was disseminated.

What they beheld was not a propagandum: it was John Kendry’s idea of how actually he best might make himself glad that he had lived. If it had been a propagandum, rather than an example; if he had carried it about with him to expound, instead of only to live by, the world from Paulter to Eastwood and from Eastwood to heights far more exalted would have let him pass to his own music, with a gathering procession of proselytes behind.

The creative intellect is not merely a white still light. It is also a living flame. Intellectual power is passion heated to incandescence. It is an energy and a propagandum. It is government—it is law. Minerva is armed; the university is militant. The symbol of the liberty which it proclaims to the world is a figure of Truth with a flaming light in one hand and in the other a naked sword!