THE WASTES OF MODERN CIVILIZATION. 623 



intellectual exercise vaunted in the arguments of its advocates, 

 but, on the contrary, almost the worst of all possible systems of 

 mental training — a dead-lift of memory, exercising the lower at 

 the expense of the higher mental faculties. Nor is there a shadow 

 of a doubt that in natural history, astronomy, geography, physi- 

 ology, and mathematics, the achievements of Greece and Rome 

 have been distanced as far as their own writers eclipsed the 

 wiseacres of Scythia and Abyssinia. Yet the New World con- 

 tinues to emulate the Old in wooing the specters of the past, 

 and thousands of American parents encumber the memory of 

 their children with a mass of antiquarian rubbish that leaves no 

 room for the culture of progressive science, too often not even 

 for the adequate study of their own mother-tongue. 



A cardinal tenet of mediaeval ethics was the belief in the merit 

 of mental prostitution — the duty of submitting to dogmas which 

 their professors did not and could not believe, and which the exi- 

 gencies of daily life obliged them practically to repudiate. 



A logical consequence of that doctrine was the antagonism of 

 theory and practice, which continues to involve an enormous 

 waste in our method of moral education. A million pulpits still 

 preach a gospel that inculcates the vanity of industrial pursuits. 

 "Take no thought of the morrow, for the morrow shall take 

 thought for the things of itself." "Take no thought, saying, 

 What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or wherewithal shall 

 we be clothed ? For after all these do the Gentiles seek." As 

 a practical comment on the wisdom of those precepts, nations, 

 cities, and corporations vie in the restless pursuit of wealth, and 

 a thousand lessons of daily life admonish the young citizen of 

 our industrial world to take earnest and constant thought of the 

 morrow ; nay, the mere attempt to disregard those lessons would 

 be followed by the punishment of the shiftless vagrant. 



Loss of health and wealth, loss of working capacity — in fact, 

 every form of temporal affliction — the disciples of our moral exem- 

 plar are instructed to consider as proofs of divine favor. Yet the 

 prevention of such favors is the legally encouraged purpose of 

 dozens of fire and life insurance companies and mutual aid asso- 

 ciations with their omnipresent agencies. 



Our ethical text-books in the plainest terms teach the possi- 

 bility of curing diseases by prayer and mystic ceremonies. " If 

 any man is sick among you, let him call for the elders of the 

 church and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the 

 name of the Lord." " And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, 

 and the Lord shall raise him up." " And when he had called unto 

 him his twelve disciples, he gave them power against unclean 

 spirits, to cast them out and to heal all manner of disease." Yet 

 in at least forty-five of the fifty most civilized countries of Chris- 



