6z6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



hill-pasture where a young goat-herd lay stretched out at full 

 length under a tree still dripping from the showers of a recent 

 thunder-storm. 



" Hallo, Billy ! " called out my companion. " What are you 

 doing in that puddle of rain ? Don't you know there is a law 

 against bathing on Sunday ? " 



" That's a fact," laughed Billy. " If a stretch in the wet grass 

 could do a fellow any good, I have no doubt there would be a law 

 against it." 



That reply exactly defines the popular verdict on a code of 

 laws founded upon a system whose corner-stone is indeed the 

 dogma that "whatever is natural is wrong." Sabbatarian des- 

 potism has succeeded in connecting the popular notion of a moral- 

 ist with the idea of a kill-joy, and made religion a synonym of a 

 system for the infliction of the greatest possible misery on the 

 greatest possible number. 



" Why, but is there not an offset in the leisure gained for the 

 perusal of moral and instructive pamphlets ? " asks the agent of 

 the Free Tract Society. 



Our pious friends can, indeed, not be accused of underrating the 

 value of those tracts if they expect them to compensate the waste 

 of opportunities for life-brightening recreations, the loss of good 

 humor, the loss of patriotism, the loss of faith in the benefits of 

 laws and creeds, the loss of content, and the often irretrievable 

 loss of health and vital energy. 



THE ETHICAL VIEW OF PROTECTION: 



A WORD TO THE WAYFARING MAN. 



By HUNTINGTON SMITH. 



WHENEVER any great question comes up for settlement, 

 there are always people ready with arguments on both 

 sides: These arguments are all supported by what we call facts. 

 Facts in great numbers are accumulated to prove diametrically 

 opposite things ; for there is no question, it matters not how ab- 

 surd it may be, that facts in abundance can not be found in its 

 favor. Now the simple truth is, that facts mean nothing till we 

 know the relation which they bear to other facts. A mass of facts 

 is like a heap of bricks ; and just as you can construct any sort 

 of a building out of a given heap of bricks, so out of a sufficient 

 number of facts you can, by picking your material and fitting it 

 together in accordance with some plan you have already deter- 

 mined upon, build up any sort of an argument. There is a com- 

 mon saying that figures will not lie. It is true that figures do not 



