266 WHAT IS LIFE ? 



It is the scientific world and the great commercial 

 classes which are producing this wonderful inter- 

 original text as it is for us to read the Bible in the original Hebrew. 

 The enormous expense of time and labour demanded by this luxurious 

 sport in classical grammars might be applied to infinitely better 

 purpose, in the study of the wonderful domain of phenomena which 

 have been opened up to us within the last half century by the 

 gigantic advances of natural science, more especially of geology, 

 biology, and anthropology. 



" Unfortunately, however, the disparity between our daily increasing 

 knowledge of the real world, and the limited standpoint of our so- 

 called ideal education for the young, is becoming greater day by day. 

 And it is, in fact, those persons who exercise most influence upon our 

 practical education the theologians and jurists and likewise the 

 privileged teachers, the philologists and historians, who know least 

 about the most important phenomena of the actually existing world, 

 and of the real history of nature. The structure and origin of our 

 earth, as well as of our own human body subjects which have 

 become of the utmost interest owing to the astonishing progress of 

 modern geology and anthropology are unknown to the most of 

 them. To speak of the human egg and its development, they consider 

 either a ridiculous myth or a vulgar piece of immodesty. And yet 

 this subject reveals to us a series of actually recognized facts, which 

 cannot be surpassed in general interest or high importance by any 

 other in the wide domain of human knowledge. 



" It is true these facts are not calculated to excite approval among 

 persons who assume a complete distinction between man and the rest 

 of nature, and who will not acknowledge the animal origin of the 

 human race. That origin must be a very unpleasant truth to 

 members of the ruling and privileged castes in those nations among 

 which there exists an hereditary division of social classes, in conse- 

 quence of false ideas about the laws of inheritance. It is well known 

 that, even in our day, in many civilized countries the idea of heredi- 

 tary grades of rank goes so far that, for example, the aristocracy 

 imagine themselves to be of a nature totally different from that of 

 ordinary citizens, and nobles who commit a disgraceful offence are 

 punished by being expelled from the caste of nobles, and thrust down 

 among the pariahs of ' vulgar citizens.' What are these nobles to- 

 think of the blue blood in their privileged veins, when they learn. 



