844 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the cardinal principles of religion may 

 well be evoked ; but insist that definite 

 answers must be found to these trans- 

 scendent questions, and that there is 

 just one authorized way of arriving at 

 such answers, and you provoke revolt. 

 The only result, therefore, of Emperor 

 William's scheme, could it be realized, 

 would be to fill the German fatherland 

 with intellectual stagnation, formalism, 

 and hypocrisy. Such, too, would be the 

 effect here if the faint-hearts of the reli- 

 gious world could have their way. They 

 would intrust the inculcation of reli- 

 gious truths to the public-school teach- 

 ers, and would place religion on a par 

 with geography, with this difference in 

 favor of geography that it could prove all 

 its statements by irrefragable evidence, 

 while religion, though taught with an 

 equal air of authority, could not in any 

 similar manner prove its statements. 

 Truly, the friends of a cause are often 

 its greatest enemies, while those who 

 get the credit of being its enemies are 

 often its truest friends. 



That the American people will not 

 hand over their religion to the state to 

 be sterilized in the public schools is now 

 a matter of certainty, and it will be a 

 very bad sign if anything of this kind 

 happens in Germany. "We can imagine 

 a cynical enemy of all religion aiding 

 and abetting the emperor's scheme, in 

 the confident expectation that it would 

 do more in ten years to extinguish vital 

 religion in the German Empire than 

 all the attacks of all the freethink- 

 ers could do in a century. We could 

 ima;?ine, too, that people with whom re- 

 ligion was a mere fashion or social 

 badge might favor it as tending to at- 

 tach a stigma to independent thought; 

 but we can not imagine sincerely and 

 intelligently religious people lending it 

 any countenance. If tlie religious clauses 

 of the present German education bill 

 become law, it will be a clear sign that, 

 to all intents and purposes, religion is 

 dead in Germany. 



SAFEGUARDS OF UEALTB. 



While disease at one front of battle 

 is ever yielding to the advances of medi- 

 cal skill, at another it is as surely sur- 

 rendering to the progress of hygiene. 

 To-day the physician is asked not only 

 how the sick may be healed, but how 

 the well may stay well. From year to 

 year investigation lengthens the list of 

 diseases strictly preventable, and diph- 

 theria and typhoid only linger to mark 

 the neglect of well-understood precau- 

 tions. Vaccination has been so striking 

 an example of what prophjlaxis can do, 

 that hundreds of eager experimenters 

 are endeavoring to bring consumption 

 and scarlet fever into the same category 

 as small-pox. From maladies less seri- 

 ous, but much more common, the public 

 is fast learning that immunity is largely 

 a question of taking care of one's gen- 

 eral health and vigor. Seeds of disease 

 which find a foothold in an enfeebled 

 frame are either repelled by a sound 

 and hearty constitution or harmlessly 

 digested by it. To maintain this happy 

 condition wholesome food, abundant ex- 

 ercise, personal cleanliness, temperance 

 in all things, and the avoidance of worry 

 are indispensable. 



There are a good many people who 

 know their lung-tissues to be delicate, 

 or their heart-action to be irregular, or 

 who suffer from some other constitu- 

 tional weakness. Among this class the 

 custom is gradually spreading of con- 

 sulting a physician, not when acute diffi- 

 culty has arisen, but as soon as the in- 

 firmity is detected, and periodically there- 

 after. Not seldom health is maintained 

 in this way and life lengthened, for it is 

 in their early stages of development 

 that many diseases, especially the ob- 

 scure derangements of the nervous sys- 

 tem, can be most successfully treated. 

 Perhaps it is the daily glass of spirits, 

 or the weekly supper party, which the 

 physician interdicts. Quite as often it 

 is the allurement of the stock exchange 

 or the card-table which he has to pro- 



