Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 75.djvu/414

410 does not steal, because he is neither a murderer nor a thief. Society does not need to surround him with policemen in order that he may he led to conclude with some reluctance and regret that honesty is the best policy! And when he goes about doing good, when he helps the fatherless and the widow in their affliction, he is not doing such deeds in order that he may secure to himself personal advantages in the nature of titles to valuable celestial properties. He thinks not of himself when his brother calls for help. He has within him the instincts of a gentleman. They were born in him. They have been bred into his very bones. These instincts prompt him to respect the rights and property of others, and to lend a hand when others need his help. He is ready to do his part in providing the children who are living amid brutal surroundings, with those influences which will inspire them with admiration for that which is pure and good and manly.

The highest type of man of which we can conceive deserves no more credit for being what he is, morally, than he deserves credit for having a white skin. It is precisely this which makes him a man of the highest type. He does not need to waste his strength in resisting temptation to do wrong. When we come to consider the character of the Creator of these wonders, which so far as we know find their highest expression in the human race, on this little insignificant earth, we can not think of him as claiming or deserving any credit for being what he is, or for doing what he has done.

We can not think of him as having been sorely tempted to do wrong and having resisted the temptation. We can not think of him as having struggled into his present position, under adverse and discouraging conditions, in a manner which entitles him to praise. We can not think of him as an oriental despot, who demands praise of his creatures, most of whom have never studied physics or astronomy or chemistry or biology, and who are therefore unable to properly appreciate the wonders which surround them on every hand.

We have, however, made progress, and we can all see that the possession of such knowledge as we possess, by the masses of the people, during those dark and brutal periods of religious intolerance, would have made impossible those bloody quarrels over questions to which we give not the slightest thought.