THE WASTES OF MODERN CIVILIZATION. 621 



museum to make such exhibitions of apartments from various 

 stations, by means of which we shall be able to convey ideas of 

 the more important parts of the house. 



The new enterprise invites the active co-operation of our coun- 

 trymen. As a rule, the people know best where such treasures as 

 we desire to bring to light are to be found. We therefore ask 

 them to help us gather up such national relics as still exist in the 

 way of dress and house furnishings to be preserved for the obser- 

 vation of posterity. — Translated for the Popular Science Monthly 

 from Die Gartenlaube. 





THE WASTES OF MODERN CIVILIZATION, 



Br FELIX L. OSWALD, M. D. 

 II. 



THE use of certain remedial drugs is apt to become a confirmed 

 habit, which often continues to afflict the patient for years 

 after his apparent recovery from the effects of the original dis- 

 ease. The medication of desperate moral disorders has now and 

 then entailed a similar penalty. During the millennium of medise- 

 val superstition, when the enforcement of antinatural dogmas had 

 made common sense a capital crime and secular science an article 

 of contraband, the study of classic literature became for thou- 

 sands a refuge from the peril of madness. From the tyranny of 

 the monkish Inquisition thousands of persecuted thinkers could 

 still escape to the haunts of Plato and Virgil, as, in spite of chains 

 and guards, a Siberian exile may in dreams return to the lost para- 

 dise of freedom. Knowledge, too, could still be delved from the 

 treasure-mine of pagan philosophy, and for nearly a thousand 

 years the study of dead languages became thus a chief condition 

 of intellectual survival. 



Intellectual progress had been almost completely arrested. 

 Like a monstrous dam, the barrier of an unnatural dogma ob- 

 structed the currents of civilization ; all through priest-ridden 

 Europe the rivers of national life had been collected into a vast 

 theological mill-pond, and only from the heights of a classical edu- 

 cation, from turrets accessible only by steep and tortuous stairs, 

 philosophers could, in retrospect, study the phenomena of life un- 

 der less abnormal conditions, and naturally made the attic of that 

 edifice the repository of their own choicest thought. 



Then came the great dam-burst of the Protestant revolt. The 

 rills of the first breach soon became uncontrollable torrents, and 

 the flood of the accumulated waters rushed onward with an impe- 

 tus which, in the rapid progress of science and reform, promised 



