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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ary or other reactionists say what they 

 will, and that is, that in a moral point 

 of view the world is vastly better to-day 

 than it was centuries ago. The world 

 has had its ages of faith ; the world has 

 now its age of comparative reason. If 

 we want poisoners who could outdo the 

 performances of M. Feuillet's young 

 woman in La Morte, we go to the ages 

 of faith, we seek them in papal courts 

 amid cardinals and their relatives. If 

 we want filial ingratitude in far more 

 hideous forms than M. Duruy has under- 

 taken to paint, the same society, in the 

 same age, will furnish it. The true 

 middle age is shown in the works it 

 has produced, in the Decameron of 

 Boccaccio and the Canterbury Tales of 

 Chaucer, in which lust and superstition 

 walk hand in hand. Charles Reade 

 has also given a powerful picture of it 

 in his acknowledged masterpiece, The 

 Cloister and the Hearth. Let any one 

 compare the condition of Europe at that 

 time with its condition to-day, and then 

 say whether the material, moral, and 

 intellectual interests of mankind have 

 not gained immensely by the emanci- 

 pation of thought and the weakening of 

 authority. 



But if we look at the case presented 

 to us byM. Duruy in Ni Dieu ni Maitre, 

 we shall see how very ill he conceives 

 the duties of a really enlightened father 

 toward his children. His Pierre No- 

 garet. a physician in the very front rank 

 of his profession, with an annual income 

 of over a hundred thousand francs, has 

 two children, Maurice and Adrienne, 

 whose mother is dead. Instead of in- 

 teresting himself in their education, he 

 turns them over to hired teachers, and 

 never asks what progress they are mak- 

 ing or how their characters are devel- 

 oping. In a conversation between the 

 brother and sister, the former is made 

 to say : " I have grown up I don't 

 know how; no one has ever told me 

 what is right or what is wrong, and I 

 can't find it out entirely by myself. Papa 

 made me take up the study of the sci- 



ences, but he never took the trouble to 

 see whether I learned anything, and now 

 there are moments when I feel that I 

 am not worth a rush." The sister has 

 very much the same account to give of 

 her education ; and both brother and 

 sister w r ere brought up, as the story 

 shows, in very extravagant habits. Both 

 were launched into the world of fashion 

 without any effort being made to guard 

 them against the temptations to which 

 they were thus exposed. 



Now why, we ask, should this be 

 offered to us as an example of educa- 

 tion upon modern principles? Why 

 should a man, because he has embraced, 

 let us say, evolutionary views, allow the 

 education of his children to proceed at 

 hap-hazard? Why should such a man 

 leave his children unprotected against 

 the seductions of a vitiated society? 

 Why should he allow their home affec- 

 tions to be weakened and stunted by a 

 senseless immersion in social gayeties? 

 If a clever writer wishes to do justice 

 to the great question which MM. Feuil- 

 let and Duruy approach in so partisan a 

 spirit, let him draw a picture of a man 

 who has discarded superstition because 

 of its demonstrated falsity, who has 

 embraced the principles and results of 

 science because of their demonstrated 

 truth, and whose aim it is to do in his 

 lifetime the utmost amount of good that 

 circumstances permit. Then let this 

 man have in conjunction with these 

 elevated views a certain amount of com- 

 mon sense. If he has children whom 

 he sincerely loves and such love is not 

 an unreasonable postulate in a father 

 let him recognize that, if they are to 

 dispense with the conventional aids to 

 right conduct, they must have others in 

 their place, and let him duly cultivate 

 their moral and emotional nature. Let 

 him refrain from placing them, or allow- 

 ing them to be placed, in circumstances 

 of too great temptation. Let him care- 

 fully guard against their becoming the 

 slaves of luxury and idleness. Let him 

 not give them as associates persons 



