Page:Labour - The Divine Command, 1890.djvu/153

Rh suicide! So they do not labor: that condition is too shameful.

Whence comes this state of things" From their not explaining the divine law "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou knead bread," to young and intelligent minds, and from its not being placed in books of science. For by this means men would have comprehended from their youth, that they must compel themselves to eat the bread of their own labor, and to live honestly.

They do not speak of labor, that virtue of virtues, in the primers or in the books of high science. The masters make no allusion to it, because they themselves live in idleness. Thus the child can learn nothing that is good, in the schools. He will be like the earthen vessel, which retains always the odor of the first liquid it has contained. Many examples prove this. Historians relate that the Roman emperor Caligula was so cruel that, not content with taking the life of those who displeased him, he even drank the blood of his victims. The daughter of Darius could find no more exquisite article of food than the serpent. How will you explain these facts? Must it not have been that Caligula was brought up by a cruel woman, and that the daughter of Darius had a nurse to whom the serpent's flesh was the daintiest of food?

Theologians claim that God offered the milk of wisdom as nourishment for a child, but that the devil offered him the milk of impiety. If, by fault of the parents, the child drank the