VIRTUE AND CRIME 171 



superiority. If my hypothesis can give a better and more 

 understandable knowledge of how the truths of evolution and 

 nature can be turned to account in practical life, when the days 

 of peace arrive and evolve a common form of belief in the exist- 

 ence of a common unity of aim and objects that will in the 

 future tend to more enlightened ideals of universal brother- 

 hood and mutual co-operation between nations and creeds, so 

 as to act as an incentive to produce better co-operation and 

 less antagonism between individuals and different social 

 classes in the process of production and distribution, and a 

 more practical system of education in morality and utility in 

 our social and religious education as the result of co-united 

 and mutual efforts of both religion and science to combine to 

 produce a higher system of state government, free from all 

 animosity of race, class or creed, my efforts will not go un- 

 rewarded. It is with these hopes in view that I wish to impress 

 upon you that knowledge, science and culture are only mental 

 manures that can, and do, cause mighty growths of variation 

 and genius, but do not make up education any more than in 

 manure alone lies the science -and arts of agriculture. 



As with the land, if we spread the manure, and do not 

 sow and cultivate the soil, we only get a heavier crop of weeds. 

 So in like manner with the mind, if we distribute literary 

 knowledge broadcast on a nation that has not previously been 

 educated to habits of energy, perseverance and economy and 

 moral rectitude, we only produce an increased development of 

 vice, indolence, folly and extravagance. This is why all ages 

 of great literary advancement in the past have only hastened 

 the downfall of a nation, because its rulers have confused 

 culture and literary efficiency with true education, of which 

 it is only the manure that will increase the growth of vice 

 and virtue, but not of necessity the advancement of the nation. 

 For increased culture and knowledge is a double-edged sword 

 which as often brings the downfall of a nation by confining 

 its energies to one development put of all proportion to the 

 development of others of which, although they may be of 

 slower development and therefore not at first as likely to attract 

 our notice as the more brilliant flowers that either science, 

 invention or religion may be fostering at the time, are in 

 reality of far greater importance to our welfare and advance- 

 ment. Now, it is a law of nature that the weeds always 



