268 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



solitary deep of thought cries "whither and whence." Religion, Uke a sunrise 

 upon storm-tossed waters, says "peace, be still," and hope nestles in the human 

 heart. Science, with a loud voice, makes Reason say "thou knowest not," be- 

 lieve only in knowledge, and Doubt becomes the autocrat of the present. A 

 great conflict is going on Sacred citadels of faith and creed are hard beset by 

 the armies of reason and discovery. 



Let not the smoke of the conflict cloud the vision. There are some laws of 

 action true in the nature of things. These, the State should discover. The Repub- 

 lic of Rome fell with the fall of her gods. How many of the reckless lives about 

 us stranded every day upon the rocks of crime, fall through the utter vacancy 

 which follows in the track of materialistic and agnostic tendencies ? 



Robertson has said: "It is an awful hour when this life has lost its mean- 

 ing and seems shriveled into a span ; when the grave appears to be the end of 

 all, human goodness nothing but a name, and the sky above this universe a dead 

 expanse, black with the void from which God himself has disappeared. In that 

 fearful loneliness of spirit, when those who should have been his friends and 

 counsellors only frown upon his' misgivings, and profanely bid him stifle doubts, 

 which for aught he knows may arise from the fountain of truth itself; to extin- 

 guish as a glare from hell, that which for aught he knows may be light from 

 heaven; and everything seems wrapped in hideous uncertainty, — I know but one 

 way in which a man may come forth from his agony scatheless : it is by holding 

 fast to these things -which are certain still, — the grand, simple landmarks of mo- 

 rality." 



More than eighteen hundred years ago there was born into the world a creed 

 of love and duty saying — " love thy neighbor as thyself" — beside the purity of 

 which, the codes of Confucius and Buddha, the Light of Asia, become but glitter, 

 ing baubles of oriental fancy. If it be not the province of the State to do more, 

 while the "now" is being drowned in the wild search for the secrets of the 

 future, then through all the net-work of the schools, let it lift high this banner, 

 upon which is written in letters of light the word " Humanity." Then as Ten- 

 nyson wrote : 



" Let knowledge grow from more to more. 

 But more of reverence in us dwell ; 

 That mind and soul according well 

 May make one music as before." 



But the school is not the only agency by which the State may elevate the 

 moral and intellectual tone. The prison and the hospital, the stage and 

 the stump, the press and the public library may be made more ennobling. 

 Look at your prison-houses ! There., is need of radical reform. Now, they are 

 great arsenals of trade. Hundreds are at work — a task unfinished, the lash or 

 the blind cell follow. A half hour's religious service on Sunday at the muzzle of 

 a repeating rifle, the only food for the soul. A government of fear ! But read 

 the mental transformation which Victor Hugo paints in the character of Jean 



