GROWTH OF AGRICULTURAL SOCIETIES. 29 



O, for the Christ again ! 



Already Christ is coming. Hear ye not 



The footfalls of the Lord ? 



He comes, the spirit of a riper Age, 



When all that is not good or true shall die, — 



When all that's bad in custom, false in creed, 



And all that makes the boor and mars the man, 



Shall pass away forever. Yes, he comes ! 



To give the world a passion for the truth, 



To inspire us with a holy, human love, 



To make us sure that, ere a man can be 



A saint, he first must be a man." 



It was Mr. Buckle who first drew a startling contrast 

 between our intellectual progress and our stationary morals ! 

 He asserted that moral motives had exerted an extremely 

 small influence over the progress of civilization ; " for," he 

 says, "there is unquestionably nothing to be found in the 

 world which has undergone so little change as those great 

 dogmas of which moral systems are composed. To do good 

 to others ; to sacrifice for their benefit your own wishes ; to 

 love your neighbor as 3'ourself; to forgive your enemies ; to 

 restrain your passions ; . . . . these, and a few others, 

 are the sole essentials of morals ; but they have been known 

 for thousands of years ; and not one jot or tittle has been 

 added to them by all the sermons, homilies, and text-books 

 which moralists and theologians have been able to produce. 

 . All the great moral systems which have exercised 

 much influence, have been fundamentally the same ; all the 

 great intellectual systems have been fundamentally different. 

 In reference to our moral conduct, there is not a single prin- 

 ciple now known to the most cultivated Europeans which was 

 not likewise known to the ancients. In reference to our intel- 

 lectual conduct, the moderns have not only made the most 

 important additions to every department of knowledge . 

 . . but they have created sciences, the faintest idea of which 

 never entered the mind of the boldest thinker antiquity ever 

 produced." 



Now, all this is true, — true beyond a cavil, true beyond the 

 peradventure of a doubt. But when Mr. Buckle goes on to 

 say, that, "although moral excellence is more amiable than 

 intellectual excellence, it is far less permanent and less pro- 

 ductive of real good," we dissent. Nothing has a right to be, 

 nothing has a claim to be, respected, which has not some prin- 



