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 thac 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. 

 j t cannot ^aff ord to drive away or 



32 



