628 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



sible to be wise and yet to know very few facts. Wisdom does 

 not consist in the ability to heap up facts, although our school 

 instructors seem to think it does. Wisdom is concerned with 

 something far higher than facts ; it is concerned with the true, 

 the eternal, the unchanging relations of things. The man who 

 has grasped a few of the elementary truths of existence and gov- 

 erns his life in accordance with them is wise, even if he can not 

 read a line of Latin, or solve a problem in algebra, or work out a 

 sum in the rule of three. A few of the elementary truths of ex- 

 istence are that you must treat others as you would be treated 

 yourself ; that, if you would derive the utmost possible advan- 

 tage from your relations with your fellows, you must be frank 

 and open in what you do ; that you must not build up barriers of 

 restrictions between yourself and others and expect to thrive, 

 either materially or morally, as you would if the barriers did not 

 exist — in a word, the elemental truths of existence upon which we 

 must depend are justice, fraternity, and love. The man who gov- 

 erns his life by these principles may not be a learned man ; he 

 may not be able to construct ingenious arguments from census 

 reports ; but he will be a good father, a kind neighbor, a man you 

 can trust in business, and he is pretty sure to be prosperous, be- 

 cause he is on the side of truth and righteousness, and somehow 

 or other truth and righteousness, sooner or later, always win. 



The great questions, as we have said, are all the time arising, 

 and they have to be met in some way. Each generation has its 

 own particular question to settle. In this country, a generation 

 ago, it was the abolition of slavery. That question was effectually 

 settled, as we all know. Now a new generation has come upon 

 the stage, and a new question arises. The new question is broader 

 than the other, although it does not go so deep. If it does not 

 affect so closely the very principle of manhood or call for such 

 heroic treatment, its settlement concerns the welfare of a far 

 greater number, and upon it depend the prosperity and happi- 

 ness of the whole nation. It is not, then, a question to be decided 

 lightly. Every man should think long and carefully before ren- 

 dering his decision. The question with which we are now con- 

 cerned is that of protection and free trade. 



Here, as in all other great questions, we find men taking sides 

 and trying to win converts to their own special views by argu- 

 ments in which statistics — that is, facts — in one form or another, 

 are brought together to prove diametrically opposite things. If 

 we listen to them, we are perplexed, we are not enlightened. If 

 one man tells us that wages are higher in this country because of 

 protection, and that consequently everybody is better off with pro- 

 tection than without it; and another man tells us that, while 

 wages will be lower under free trade, the expenses of living will 



