SCIENCE AND MAtf. 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 Into 

 it would seem that this astounding inference finds house- 



