26o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



worth while to destroy anything, finds both destruction and construc- 

 tion alike childish under the tottering of the very pillars of life than 

 the phenomena of an earthquake. Amid the moral shocks which the 

 collapse of the very earth itself produces, only a faith which has pro- 

 foundly convinced itself that the physical frame of things is a mere 

 scaffolding, by the lines of which the spiritual dwelling of man has 

 been fashioned, remains at all. Positivism itself, with its hierarchy 

 of the sciences, all of them resting on the material life as the substra- 

 tum of everything, would obviously disaj^pear in a moment along with 

 the menace to that physical foundation on which it bases its whole 

 system. 



It is curious to think what such races as the Teutonic would be- 

 come under the influence of frequent earthquakes. Their " solidity " of 

 character, as it is called, largely consists in the confidence they feel in 

 the sameness of all Nature's ways ; and whether it would survive that 

 confidence, and outlive the constancy on which it was nourished, is 

 very doubtful. An English squire, for instance, whose timber and 

 crops had changed places with the timber and estates of his next 

 neighbor, would certainly not be recognizably an English squire much 

 longer. An English merchant, whose stock of satins or teas had van- 

 ished under the establishment of his rival, would find the world so 

 very much out of joint that he himself would probably become an 

 unmeaning phenomenon. It is, indeed, clear that even rare periodical 

 attacks of earthquake would render the existence of a great capital 

 impossible, and the character of an agricultural population quite dif- 

 ferent, and probably much more capricious than before. And not 

 unreasonably so. Spiritual faith, even if it remain, can not well rule 

 the actions of physical beings in a physical world which has lost all 

 aspects of constancy. Indeed, repeated shocks to the physical basis 

 of things, though they may well test the strength of faith, can not of 

 course be often repeated on this earth of ours without transferring all 

 the characteristic operativeness of faith to a world of another kind. 

 Faith is faith in divine constancy ; and the constancy which has ceased 

 to govern our bodies must be discoverable in some other region, not 

 that of our bodies, if faith is to be of use. Morally, then, the only 

 use of earthquakes must be to test the growth of a spiritual faith in a 

 world and life beyond the reach of earthquakes. Clearly it can not 

 strengthen or educate such a faith. It can only sift the false faith 

 from the true, and accord to the true its triumph. Spectator. 



