EDITOR'S TABLE. 



269 



whose principles of action are the very 

 reverse of his own. Let him not be- 

 troth his daughter to an intriguing 

 jackanapes who avows himself destitute 

 of every principle save selfish ambition. 

 Let his love for his children be mani- 

 fested otherwise than by keeping up an 

 expensive establishment. If these con- 

 ditions be observed, we shall have a man 

 who, point for point, shall do just what 

 Pierre Nogaret did not do, and refrain 

 from doing what Pierre Nogaret did do. 

 And then let it be shown, if it can, in 

 consonance with recognized principles 

 of human nature, how such methods of 

 training and discipline lead directly to 

 ill-regulated and frivolous lives on the 

 part of the philosopher's children. Let 

 us see just how it comes about that nat- 

 ural affection dies out in the atmosphere 

 of such a philosopher's household. Let 

 us be made to feel in a powerful manner 

 the chasm that is left in the philoso- 

 pher's family life by the absence of the 

 priestly element. It is easy to make 

 men of straw and then knock them over 

 or treat them with any other indignity ; 

 but the task is not one that is worthy of 

 a literary artist of any ability. In M. 

 Feuillet's romance there was some at- 

 tempt made to show how the doctrine 

 of the survival of the fittest naturally 

 inspired thoughts of murder in the fe- 

 male mind. We did not think much of 

 the proffered demonstration, but it made 

 at least a decent show of respect for the 

 requirements of logic. In M. Duruy's 

 drama such show of respect is wholly 

 lacking. His philosopher entirely neg- 

 lects his children's moral education, 

 brings them up in expensive, luxurious, 

 and idle habits, exposes them to all the 

 temptations of a morally worthless so- 

 ciety, and then, when they have been 

 not wholly, but largely perverted by 

 the evil influences around them, we are 

 asked to lay the whole blame of their 

 perversion upon their father's hetero- 

 dox views, and to draw a sweeping con- 

 clusion as to the ruinous effects on mo- 

 rality of modern philosophy in general. 



The unprejudiced reader will not 

 draw any such conclusion. The con- 

 clusion that may be drawn is that no 

 set of merely speculative opinions offers 

 any guarantee for satisfactory moral de- 

 velopment apart from a careful observ- 

 ance of the conditions on which the 

 formation of sound, moral character 

 depends. It is one thing to adopt 

 the Darwinian theory ; it is quite an- 

 other to know how to bring up chil- 

 dren: and some Darwinians, or alleged 

 Darwinians, make nearly as poor a busi- 

 ness of it as some clergymen. It is not 

 the mold in which a man's opinions 

 have run that makes him a competent 

 moral educator; it is the amount of 

 earnestness he throws into moral ques- 

 tions and the amount of practical good 

 sense that he brings to bear in order to 

 insure that the children committed to 

 his charge shall be well grounded in 

 sound moral principles and habits. The 

 son of M. Duruy's philosopher tells his 

 sister that if ever he succeeds in captur- 

 ing a woman with a big fortune and has 

 children, she will see how he will "stuff 

 them with religion." Alas! the recipe 

 is not a new one. How many children 

 have been "stuffed with religion," only 

 to grow up exceptionally bad ! The 

 children who do best are the children 

 of parents whose lives bear still more 

 powerful testimony than their words to 

 right principles, and who are not too 

 busy to take a constant interest in their 

 children's education, moral as well as 

 intellectual. To ask the world to go 

 back to mediajvalism in order to save 

 morals from destruction is asking too 

 much. That system has been tried and 

 found wanting, and the world is now 

 seeking another and a better foundation 

 for morals. Doubtless many rush for- 

 ward and grasp at the new opinions 

 without realizing all that they involve 

 and demand. The age is one of unset- 

 tlement ; but it is one, unmistakably, of 

 progress ; and when our methods of ed- 

 ucation have been adapted to the new 

 truths now in course of formulation, 



