38 SELECTIONS FROM HUXLEY 



in the nature of things a reason for every moral law, as cogent 

 and as well denned as that which underlies every physical 

 law ; that stealing and lying are just as certain to be followed 

 by evil consequences, as putting your hand in the fire, or 

 5 jumping out of a garret window. Again, though the scholar 

 may have been acquainted, in dogmatic fashion, with the 

 broad laws of morality, he has had no training in the applica- 

 tion of those laws to the difficult problems which result from 

 the complex conditions of modern civilization. Would it not 



10 be very hard to expect any one to solve a problem in conic 

 sections who had merely been taught the axioms and defini- 

 tions of mathematical science ? 



A workman has to bear hard labor, and perhaps privation 

 while he sees others rolling in wealth, and feeding their dogs 



1 5 with what would keep his children from starvation. Would 

 it not be well to have helped that man to calm the natural 

 promptings of discontent by showing him, in his youth, the 

 necessary connection of the moral law which prohibits steal- 

 ing with the stability of society by proving to him, once 



20 for all, that it is better for his own people, better for himself, 

 better for future generations, that he should starve than 

 steal ? If you have no foundation of knowledge, or habit of 

 thought, to work upon, what chance have you of persuading 

 a hungry man that a capitalist is not a thief "with a circum- 



25 bendibus" ? And if he honestly believes that, of what avail 

 is it to quote the commandment against stealing, when he 

 proposes to make the capitalist disgorge ? 



Again, the child learns absolutely nothing of the history 

 or the political organization of his own country. His general 



30 impression is, that everything of much importance happened 

 a very long while ago ; and that the Queen and the gentle- 

 folks govern the country much after the fashion of King David 

 and the elders and nobles of Israel his sole models. Will 

 you give a man with this much information a vote? In 



