552 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



its writers may cling to less defensible 

 positions. There is a great work for 

 our new contemporary to do in freeing 

 the religious sentiment from delusions 

 which only serve to check its free ex- 

 pansion and development. Many now 

 think that, in some mysterious manner, 

 they ingratiate themselves with higher 

 powers by disparaging and abusing their 

 reasoning faculty ; but The New World, 

 if we do not mistake its mission, is pre- 

 pared to teach a different lesson name- 

 ly, that the fullest development and 

 greatest activity of the reasoning faculty 

 are absolutely essential to the highest 

 religious life. When man is a free being 

 in the largest sense of the word, and has 

 reconciled himself, once for all, to the 

 conception of all-pervading law, his re- 

 ligious nature may then reach out for 

 its own satisfactions, not only without 

 dread of aught which it may be in the 

 power of Science to reveal, but with a 

 glad confidence that all further discov- 

 eries can only tend to a deepening of 

 that spirit of reverence and self -rever- 

 ence in which religion essentially con- 

 sists. Science at last is coming into its 

 own in this world in which its mission 

 has so often been ignored or misunder- 

 stood, and in which the labors and sac- 

 rifices of its votaries have so often been 

 repaid with persecution and reproach. 

 The New World is a hopeful sign of the 

 times, and we bespeak for it a liberal 

 support from those who believe that, in 

 religion as in science, there are better 

 things in store for us than the world has 

 yet seen. 



COMMON SENSE WANTED. 



Evket day some new law is passed 

 somewhere or other to protect people 

 against the results of their own igno- 

 rance and folly ; but it is comparatively 

 seldom that we hear of any proposition 

 of a serious or comprehensive kind to 

 do away with the ignorance and folly 

 which render, or seem to render, so 

 many laws necessary. Popular educa- 



tion is believed by some to be doing this 

 work about as fast as it can be done ; 

 but this we hold to be a serious error. 

 There never was a time, we believe, 

 when so many people were trading on 

 the thoughtlessness and credulity of the 

 masses as at present. The Post-Office 

 Department spends a considerable per- 

 centage of the energy which it should 

 devote to perfecting the mail service of 

 the country in unsuccessful efforts to pre- 

 vent the mails from being used to pro- 

 mote fraudulent schemes. The result, 

 doubtless, is to more or less embarrass 

 some swindling businesses ; but as fast as 

 one is suppressed another takes its place, 

 and some that seem to have been sup- 

 pressed have only changed their name 

 and perhaps their base of operations. 

 But, in addition to schemes that are un- 

 mistakably fraudulent, there are hun- 

 dreds of at least dubious character that 

 spread their nets in the advertising (some- 

 times even in the editorial) columns of 

 the press. No offer is too grossly ex- 

 travagant to captivate and delude some 

 persons who might be supposed able to 

 take care of themselves in an ordinary 

 business transaction. We have known 

 a man who could write a fair business 

 letter send a dollar in response to an ad- 

 vertisement which stated that, for that 

 sum, the advertiser would send a com- 

 plete set of parlor furniture in black 

 walnut and crimson plush to any ad- 

 dress, carriage paid. This intelligent 

 gentleman was very angry because, in 

 return for his dollar, he got a few toy 

 articles made of chips and rags and in- 

 closed in a pasteboard box about six 

 inches long by three broad, the whole 

 thing weighing only a few ounces. The 

 protests which he addressed, as we are 

 informed, to the postal authorities were 

 conceived in a fine tone of moral indig- 

 nation, though the only part which the 

 post-office had taken in the matter had 

 been to convey to him a most harmless 

 consignment of goods. So far as we 

 could learn, it never occurred to him to 

 pronounce himself an ass of high degree, 



