NEW WORLDS

Why are some men good and others bad? Simple as the question is, it has perplexed philosophers ever since the first one coined the word "why." From Thales to Doctor Frank Crane superior souls have pondered and searched for the answer to this question; but down the ages every new philosopher has come no closer to the correct answer than his predecessors. So it happened that the world has always enjoyed a plentiful supply of bad men, for no one could prescribe a cure which worked in all cases.

Now, at last, an unexpected prophet arises in an unexpected quarter, and his answer is as simple as any idiot could demand. The moral organ is neither the pinear gland, as Descartes thought, nor the thyroid gland, as Gamallel Bradford would have one-believe. The teeth have turned out to be the center of a man's moral sense.

Perhaps this is too simple to accept without proof. If so, the proof is to be had in an address delivered before the Advertising Club of Portland, Oregon by the advertising director of a well known toothpaste company. "I challenge You," he said, "to find a boy with a clean mouth and a dirty heart. The boy who washes his teeth twice a day doesn't go wrong. He can't."

There you are! Emerson once said: "We are as much gainers by finding a new property in the old earth, as by acquiring a new planet." It is in this light that one must reflect upon the latent virtue of toothpaste. The discovery opens a limitless vista stretching away into the golden future. One little tube of toothpaste is enough to keep an entire family good for a week, and all for only fifty cents! The antiquated golden rule may now be rewritten, and its general and indefinite phrasing converted into a simple command which everyone can understand and remember.

"When tempted, brush your teeth." But just suppose some dire calamity should strike the toothpaste industry. What, then, would become of the nation's morals?