326 MYTH AND SCIENCE. 



freedom may ever increase in Italy. It will be an 

 evil day for her if such reverence be lost, and she will 

 become with every other people in like case a wretched 

 spectacle, and will fall into such abject misery as to 

 become the laughing-stock of every civilized nation. 

 It will be understood that I do not erect science and 

 liberty into fetishes to be generally adored: they are 

 only sacred means to a more sacred end, namely, to 

 enable men to practise and not merely to apprehend 

 the truth, which in other words is goodness. Science 

 and freedom are valuable only so far as they teach, 

 persuade, and enable us to improve ourselves and 

 others ; to exercise every private and public virtue ; 

 to claim only what is due to ourselves, while making 

 the needful sacrifice to the common good ; to have 

 a respect for humanity, and to venerate knowledge 

 only so far as it is combined with virtue ; to attempt 

 in every way to alleviate the miseries of others, 

 to deliver their minds from ignorance and error ; to 

 do right for its own sake without coveting rewards 

 in heaven or on earth ; to submit to no dictation but 

 that of truth and goodness. 



With these sacred objects in view, whatever may 

 be said to the contrary, we shall, in addition to the 

 ineffable fruition of truth for its own sake, ever draw 

 nearer to the ideal of the human race, and the time 

 will come when an apparent Utopia shall be actually 

 realized, in accordance with the mode and process of 

 growing civilization. Not by excesses, tumults, and 



