The Blood of the Nation 



been for the better ; the change in the 

 blood was all for the worse. 



Other influences which destroyed the 

 best were social repression, religious in- 

 tolerance, and the intolerance of irre- 

 ligion and unscience. It was the atheist 

 mob of Paris which destroyed Lavoisier, 

 with the sneer thai: the new republic of 

 reason had no use for savants. The 

 old conservatism burned the heretic at 

 the stake, banished the Huguenot, de- 

 stroyed the lover of freedom, silenced 

 the agitator. Its intolerance gave Cu- 

 vier and Agassiz to Switzerland, sent 

 the Le Contes to America, the Jouberts 

 to Holland, and furnished the backbone 

 of the fierce democracy of the Trans- 

 vaal. While not all agitators are sane, 

 and not all heretics right-minded, yet 

 no nation can spare from its numbers 

 those men who think for themselves 

 and those who act for themselves. 

 It cannot afford to drive away or 



32 



