SCIENCE AND MAN. 619 
most important factor, unlocking moral energies which 
might otherwise remain imprisoned and unused. If the 
preacher thoroughly feels that words of enlightenment, 
courage, and admonition enter into the list of forces em- 
ployed by Nature herself for man's amelioration, since she 
gifted man with speech, he will suffer no paralysis to fall 
upon his tongue. Dung the fig-tree hopefully, and not 
until its barrenness has been demonstrated beyond a doubt 
let the sentence go forth, "Cut it down, why cumbereth it 
the ground?" 
I remember when a youth in the town of Halifax, some 
two-and-thirty years ago, attending a lecture given by a 
young man to a small but select audience. The aspect of 
the lecturer was earnest and practical, and his voice soon 
riveted attention. He spoke of duty, defining it as a 
debt owed, and there was a kindling vigor in his words 
which must have strengthened the sense of duty in the 
minds of those who heard him. No speculations regard- 
ing the freedom of the will could alter the fact that the 
words of that young man did me good. His name was 
George Dawson. He also spoke, if you will allow me 
to alude to it, of a social subject much discussed at the 
time the Chartist subject of " leveling." Suppose, he 
says, two men to be equal at night, and that one rises 
at six, while the other sleeps till nine next morning, what 
becomes of your leveling? And in so speaking he made 
himself the mouthpiece of Nature, which, as we have seen, 
secures advance, not by the reduction of all to a common 
level, but by the encouragement and conservation of what 
is best. 
It may be urged that, in dealing as above with my hypo- 
thetical criminal, I am assuming a state of things brought 
about by the influence of religions which include the 
dogmas of theology and the belief in free-will a state, 
namely, in which a moral majority control and keep in awe 
an immoral minority. The heart of man is deceitful above 
all things, and desperately wicked. Withdraw, then, our 
theologic sanctions, including the belief in free-will, and 
the condition of the race will be typified by the samples 
of individual wickedness which have been above adduced. 
We shall all, that is, become robbers, and ravishers, 
and murderers. From much that has been written of late 
it would seem that this astounding inference finds house- 
