.* *> «►, ••••• Jp V • -3 ^ A 6 **. *'^- T ' -.^ * ^ ° *V V Iter, 'ev* .vfli^ "W •■ K* a N ^ ^ .* A ^ V •;«£:•. ^ •'\ > 4 °o ♦ ^ v v . '^0' r oK > ^ <0 °v •» ^ 4, v ^ <*. *o The March of Intellect A Review of Man's Achievements That Make for the Advancement of CIVILIZATION and A Glimpse of the Future By T. J. BROOKS BF^ADWAY PUBLISHING CO 835 Broadway, N. Y. Copyright, 1909, BY T. J. Brooks. PREFACE. May we have a pleasant and profitable journey together as we follow "The March of Intellect" along the pathway of human progress, pausing here and there to admire the mountain peaks of achieve- ment wrapt in love's supernal glory. ^f CHAPTER I MARCH OF INTELLECT. CONTENTS May we have a pleasant and profitable journey together as we follow "The March of Intellect" along the pathway of human progress, pausing here and there to admire the mountain peaks of achieve- ment wrapt in love's supernal glory. Very Truly Thine, T. T. Brooks. The March of Intellect CHAPTER I. THE MARCH OF INTELLECT. "May blank defeat and scorn and shame, Be his who strives to bind The restless leaping waves of thought, The free tide of the mind." "It yet shall tread those star-lit paths, By highest angels trod, Nor pause till at the farthest world In the universe of God." "For I doubt not through the ages, One increasing purpose runs, And the thoughts of men are widened With the process of the suns." ANCIENT. Since the morning of the world Intellect has led mundane creation. Thought alone can supersede the reign of physical law. By the force of truth, forged at the furnace of Intellect, man is freed from the chains of error. 7 8 THE MARCH OF INTELLECT EGYPT. In most ancient time — of which we can trace — this psychic force plied its faculties on the banks of Afric's Nile, and on the rugged plains of Asia, in building- palace, temple, pyramidic tomb, sphynx, column, and obelisk. Many arts, of which we know not now the mastery, trace their origin to Egypt, "the gift of the Nile." Here history, as preserved, was born, and geometry cradled — an infant destined to wax as great as the planes of the heavens — and jurisprudence received its basic formulation. Here magic was a gay art and astrology flourished to feed the imagination and facinate with mys- tery. Here, where Joseph rose from servant to governor; from whence Moses led three million slaves to freedom, and to whom he delivered the Decalogue, writ with pen dipped in the light of Sinai. THE EAST. In the valleys of the Euphrates and Tigres it plied its skill in the palaces of Ninevah and Baby- lon, and wrought its power through the exclusive knowledge of the Magi, and exemplified its literary and religious thought in the Avestan. PALESTINE. In the valley of the Jordan it left its footprints in Solomonic temples erected to "Israel's God," and builded a theology more enduring than all others. Where Joshua commanded, ami David sang and ruled, and Solomon planned and built, THE MARCH OF INTELLECT 9 and Jeremiah lamented, and Ezekiel and Isaiah prophesied with visions of fire, and Nehemiah, with the sword of defense in one hand and the trowel of construction in the other, rebuilt Jerusalem, the city of Israel's glory, and Matthew wrote in words stained with the blood of the cross. Here lived and labored that Divine Man of Bethlehem, whose ethics and life touch the heart of the world. The footsteps of this Man of Sorrow made its rugged hills "Holy ground," and to Him each succeeding generation gladly pays the tribute of its admiration and its tears. GREECE. In Greece Intellect blossomed anew in the fine arts and delved in philosophy, revealing much of its powers and laws. Why does history so often revert to Greece? Because every phase of human life found expression there. No deed of heroism, no act of devotion, no effort of patriotism, no beauty of art, no glory of wealth, no fame of power, no extent of dominion, no triumph of con- quest, no depth of learning, no pride of self-im- portance — Ay— and no degree of barbarity, no ruin of grandeur, no depth of degradation, no em- battled ambition, no despair of lost hope, no in- tensity of slavery, but all found fullest expression on her ruffled peninsulas overlooking the tideless waves of her storm-beaten seas. Athens was the literary metropolis of the world, the emporium of science as well as commerce. Her poetry, oratory, and heroism is an enduring legacy to mankind. Thither came students and the ripest io THE MARCH OF INTELLECT scholars of every land to drink at the fountain of knowledge and to luxuriate in her mysticisms and mythologies. In her palmiest days the Empire ex- tended from the Danube to the upper Nile and from the Adriatic to the scorching plains of India, but it is of the Greece with Athens as centre, and Philippi as tangent, that we speak. Here I fomer sang ln's immortal Illiad, Solon ruled with the statesmanship of wisdom, Plato discoursed like an oracle in her academic groves, Pythagoras looked up and caught the symmetry of heaven, Phidias spoke to marble stones, and lo! they leaped forth inspiring dreams, Aristotle philosophized and laid the corner stones of logic, Demosthenes set logic on fire with oratory, Pericles turned national treasuries into urban splendor, Alexander exhau the skill of generalship, Socrates crowded ignorance till it pressed to his lips the deadly hemlock, I tarch gave us the lives of ancient heroes, "burning Saplio loved and sung." Intellect has dom, if ever, found a more classic lodgment tl on the shores of the Mgian sea. ROME. "Alas, for earth, for never shall we see That brightness in her eyes she bore when Rome was free!" In Rome, with her seven-hilled "Eternal City" — the capital of a hemisphere — Intellect showed forth in the polished life and liberal learning the leaders of the world. Art. science, jurispru- dence and war. commerce, literature and govern- ment, power, vanity and display, each flourished to full fruition. THE MARCH OF INTELLECT n Here Senica taught philosophy to kings and the scholarly, Marcus Aurelius ruled with lofty moral code, Epictitus the stoic sage kindled the light of justice in pagan darkness, Caesar sounded the depth of conquest and renown and perished as he paused to contemplate a crown. Rome — where Virgil sang, and Ariosto ro- manced, and Ovid dramatized, and Horace satir- ized, and Pompey luxurized, and Nero tyrannized and Dante dreamed, and Terence laughed, and Caligula debauched, and Vespian persecuted, and Cato and Sulla legislated, and Cassius intrigued, and Cicero thundered his matchless eloquence and led with his flame the austere Senate, and Sallust and Livy wrote history, and Paul and Peter scorched sin till it martyrized them as it had done Christ in Palestine. Rome, whom Antony deserted for Egypt's be- witching queen, and Brutus loved but assassinated its virtual king, and Lepidus bartered, and Scipio defended and taught; against which Carthage thundered, and Cateline conspired, and the world finally rebelled. Rome, where ecclesiasticism was enthroned and justice dethroned, and Popes ruled, and wickedness piled up, and abomination flourished, and cruelties held sway, and civilization halted. The Colosseum and the forum, the Republic and the Empire, were monuments to its labors. CHAPTER II MEDIAEVAL CHAPTER II. MEDIAEVAL. During the middles ages the greatest activity was displayed among the people of northwestern Europe; and to them and their descendants is due the greatest part of all modern achievements. Greek thought and culture and Roman law stood the test of change, and were transplanted into other European states, forming a nucleus for their ad- vancement. In Spain it built the Alhambra and the Arabic empire of the west and diffused the light of Ori- ental knowledge throughout western Europe. Thither came artisans to receive instruction in the useful arts: To the universities of Toledo, Car- dova, Seville, and Granada came students from other lands to study the gay sciences and the treas- ured lore of antiquity : the knights and steel-clad warriors of the north came thither to accomplish themselves in the blandishments of chivalry. Here flourished the outposts of Islamism, and the Moors — a people who conquered, ruled, and passed away ; leaving only mementoes of a brave, intelligent, and graceful people. The Roman Empire represented centralized gov- ernment in its most flagrant form. When it toppled over the feudal system arose, which was the op- 15 i6 THE MARCH OF INTELLECT posite of centralization. Art found play in build- ing fortified castles for the protection and habita- tion of feudal lords. It blossomed into knight- errantry and gradually overran Britain, Gaul, Spain, Germany, and Italy. It hastened the advent of popular rights. "It first presented itself in the development of industrial arts and commerce in cities which ob- tained, as corporations, a part of the rights of the feudal proprietors, which they proceeded to exer- cise under the form of free cities in Germany, privileged Communes in France and commercial Republics in Italy. Another development, highly favorable some centuries later to the reaction of popular freedom against centralized despotism in government, was the religious protest against the church over freedom of thought." Rulers were struggling for ecclesiastical suprem- acy and the Pope for political supremacy, in which he succeeded to the extent of becoming the balance of power. In 622 Islamism arose in the Arabian peninsula, and the new religion spread with astonishing rapid- ity. In one hundred years the Saracens had estab- lished a vast empire; including Persia, Egypt, northern Africa, and Armenia, and threatened to inundate Europe; having set itself firmly in Spain its votaries prepared for further invasion. Totally unlike the Christian religion in its method of gain- ing converts it proceeded by conquest at arms. Its fanatical warriors rushed with an impetuosity that had swept everything before them. Marshalling 400,000 strong, these cavaliers of the Crescent under Abderrahman, flushed by the uninterrupted I THE MARCH OF INTELLECT 17 course of conquest, and to whom death in battle was but a quick and sure way to the joys of Ely- sium, poured over the Pyrenees into fair France for conquest and plunder, and met the soldiers of the cross under Charles Martel on the field of Tours, A. D. 732. All the pomp and ostentation of martial equipment was there on the side of the invaders to produce another field of the "Cloth of Gold"; all the beauty and effectiveness of a wonderful cavalry and the glitter and gloss of gorgeous paraphernalia were there to dazzle and inspire. Two religions, two nations, and two peo- ples were met in deadly conflict. Again and again did the Moslem hosts dash against the French to be thrown back like the waves of the sea breaking into spray against the rocky shore. Three hundred thousand slain attested the awfulness of the con- flict The tide of Moslem inundation was stayed in its westward course and turned back to the Orient. The Catholic Church having grown strong under the favor of rulers and assumed dictatorial powers with the Pope as the head, exercised both religious and civil prerogatives. After the battle of Tours "the star of empire" took another step westward. Pepin le Bref, the son of Martel, caused himself to be crowned king of France by the Roman Pontiff, Steven II, which added to his own prestige, as it also did to that of the Pope. Charlemagne, the son of Pepin, ascended the throne in 771, and received an imperial title from the Pope. In the course of time — 963 — that title was inherited by the German rulers who, for a long time, struggled for the con- trol of Italy and a feudal superiority over the 18 THE MARCH OF INTELLECT Popes. The Popes triumphed in the contest, but the reaction against this spiritual control prepared the way for the Protestant Reformation of the six- teenth century, in which was the germ of Repub- licanism. In 1096, Peter the Hermit organized the first crusade. One followed another till seven expedi- tions had gone out on the "fool's errand" of trying to take the empty tomb of Christ from the "Infidel Turks." The last effort was made in 1270. These senseless wars well-nigh exhausted feudalistic Eu- rope. It was a case of fanaticism pitted against fanaticism, but it served, in a great measure, to break down feudalism and to develop skill in navi- gation, and led to international commerce. The mariner's compass was invented in the fourteenth century 7 and gave a new impetus to navigation. It is difficult for us to comprehend the embar- rassments which want of diffused information pre- sented to the progress of Intellect in ancient and mediaeval times. With no books, or at best, but very few, with no papers, with no schools for the masses, with almost no instruments of thought and education, it would seem natural that people should remain in darkness. That they raised themselves so far out of a condition so low and helpless and created so many instruments and methods of ad- vancement, is proof of the wonderful capacity for advancement that lies in humanity, and is a prophecy of the future. Added to the barriers to progress just mentioned has been the disposition of kings and priests to curb freedom oi speech and, incidentally, of freedom of thought and action. They did not want their authority questioned or THE MARCH OF INTELLECT 19 their power curtailed, so the two commonly united, from the earliest times, for mutual support. The great summnm bonum of earthly existence and experience is to develop the individual man. The full comprehension and recognition of the moral and practical principles involved constitutes wisdom in statesmanship. On them society, insti- tutions, and states must be founded to prove en- nobling and enduring. William the Conqueror, of Normandy, crossed the English channel with an army and invaded Britain, 1066: landing at Hastings, he defeated the British under Harold and firmly established the Norman dynasty — uniting the two countries, a union which was not finally dissolved until 1450, when Charles VII. of France expelled the English. In the thirteenth century the people of Britain be- gan to assert themselves by establishing written statutes governing the affairs of state, and thus heading off the encroachments of despotism. They established the Magna Charta — the foundation of English constitutional liberty. The most favorable event of the ages to the march of Intellect and the development of the in- dividual was the invention of the art of printing by the use of movable types. This was accom- plished by Gutenberg, of Metz, Germany, in 1440. The invention of characters to represent sounds and ideas is so ancient as to be lost in dim antiqui- ties, but this new method utilized them for the first time for universal use. Nicholas Koppering (Latin- ized Copernicus) a Pole (born February 19, 1473) awakened the science of astronomy from her long sleep, and invented the science of trigonometry. 20 THE MARCH OF INTELLECT The Arabic system of notation and the various systems of alphabetic writing were thus made to serve the intellectual world in its onward march. Coincident with this method of rapid diffusion of knowledge was the revival of the spirit of learning and the founding of physical science. CHAPTER III MODERN CHAPTER III. MODERN The keels of many pioneering crafts were cut- ting the waves of every eastern sea. India had been from time immemorial a great source of com- merce. Now that ship routes were being found to the opulent land of India by the way of the Cape of Good Hope, still others were being sought. Proceeding on the conception that the world was round, Christopher Columbus, an Italian sailor, after years of importuning, was fitted out in 1492 with three vessels to try the experiment of sailing westward to the Orient. This led to the discovery of the New World. It was a great event in the midst of a great era. The Caucasian race was again at the helm of the world. Looking back on its past grandeur it aspired to higher things than it had ever achieved. The art of printing, the use of the compass, the science of astronomy, and the successful protest against spiritual despotism, all commenced their grand careers in this era. The old Masters were making the canvas to speak for coming genera- tions and Astronomers began to read aright the leaves of heaven. Copernicus discovered the plan of the solar system the year that Columbus died. 23 24 THE MARCH OF INTELLECT Gunpowder was coining into general use, while the first adventurers were creeping, with amazed curiosity, around the shores of the New Continent. The reformation began in Germany led by Martin Luther. The foundation of modern science was being laid, and civil and religious liberty were being rocked in the cradle of the busy world. A period of exploration and colonization set in and acted as a safety valve for the escapement of the restless, crowded and oppressed of the Old World. North America became the centre of colonization. Thither came those who would es- cape the oppressions of their native country. Dis- cussions on theology resulting from a clash between Catholicism and protestantism and between differ- ent branches of protestantism gave a great impetus to independent thought and profound research. In- tolerance and religious prejudice ran high during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. WicklifYe, Jerome, Huss, Zwingle, and others of the Reforma- tion had kindled fires that no tyranny could subdue. In the seventeenth century Poland's oppression be- gan, and war clouds never lifted their black wings from over Prussia for thirty years. In this wretched century 700,000 protestants were mur- dered in France in twenty-four hours, and a few years later came the massacre of Prague and the forcible banishment of 30.000 protestant families. Kings and queens were beheaded and Intellect bid- den to succumb to the tyranny of the dead. At the close of the century France reenters the scene, re- vokes the edict of Nantes, and sends into exile 800,000 of her best citizens. A terrible century, but fruitful of good as well as of tragedies. Gal- THE MARCH OF INTELLECT 25 lileo, an Italian philosopher, was inventing the tele- scope and thermometer and discerning the law governing the philosophy of falling bodies and the isochronism of the pendulum. Kepler was finding the highest laws of astronomy, Shakespeare was writing his immortal plays, Locke discoursing on the understanding, Milton singing of Paradise, and Cromwell dethroning despots ; William Harvey dis- covering the true theory of the circulation of the blood, and Sir Isaac Newton giving us the law of gravitation and other basic principles. The eighteenth century saw the growth of the spirit of liberty in the English colonies of America. They were the refuge of the oppressed of every land and had waxed strong, but still held allegi- ance to the British crown. Oppression drove them to desperation : Revolution began. The dawn of civil and religious liberty was at hand. Intellect took the side of the rights of man. The Declara- tion of Independence was issued — the grandest civil statement since, 'mid the lightnings of Sinai, the Commandments were carved, which Moses de- livered to Israel. Jefferson, Franklin, Paine, Lee, Hancock, Henry, Adams, Morris, Washington, and their like directed and enthused while the patriotism of the masses fed the flames that burned in open rebellion for seven long years. Ten thousand a year — on an average — sacrificed their lives on the altar of liberty. The rebellion was crowned with success and the Colonies became States. The United States of America was established. The grandest government yet inaugurated, embodying, as it did, such economic safeguards as secured the people against the encroachments of ecclesiastical, 26 THE MARCH OF INTELLECT civil, or military authority, except such as they might elect. To this century we owe the invention of the piano-forte, the steam engine — by Watt, Steven- son, and others — the spinning-jenny, the cotton gin — by Eli Whitney — the power loom, discoveries in chemistry — by Priestley, of England, and Lavoi- sier, of France — and in electricity, by Franklin, of America, and Galvani, of Italy. France was the birthplace of that remarkable system of government — feudalism, and was the last to crush it. It came down to near the end of the eighteenth century. The state was an army encamped at home, the nobility its captains and generals, the king the commander in chief, and the people its rank and file. The common laborers were hewers of wood and drawers of water for the military state. Industry had embellished France with gran- deur's glittering sheen, but greed walked in golden slippers and ruled with the rod of iron. While the toilers were so many ghosts of want, the ruthless beneficiaries of the unjust system were blind to the spectre of retribution which rose before their ob- tuse vision. The wrongs and sufferings of the peo- ple found voice in the writings of Voltaire, Rous- seau, and a dozen others of their school. The na- tion was aroused and began to speak with authority in the Parliament of the kingdom. The Third Estate became the First. It broke loose from the nobility and the church and established the National Assembly. Moss-grown abuses a thousand years old were swept away in an hour's sitting. G privilege and church extortion melted before its THE MARCH OF INTELLECT 27 decrees like frost before the sun. France had fallen into the hands of the people, and from them descended into the hands of a ruthless and blood- thirsty mob. Poverty and greed had met in deadly conflict. In the mad rush of reaction they en- throned the Goddess of Reason and sought to abol- ish the church. Danton, Marat, and Robespierre — the triumvirate of the Reign of Terror — fell vic- tims of the flood tide of revenge which rebounded upon these leaders of the Jacobin iconoclasts. This slaughtering mania made France the contempt and horror of nations. She became threatened by land and sea, and began to awaken from her awful nightmare. Into this tragic chaos a giant Intellect entered, and taking this volatile, erratic, and forceful peo- ple in his iron grasp, hurled them through king- doms and empires, young and old, making them hearken to the voice of France with respect and awe. Napoleon became the idol of France and the terror of a hemisphere. The eighteenth century closed and the NINETEENTH CENTURY opened with him as the central figure of the east- ern continent. He flashed the lightnings of his victories in the dazzled eyes of nations. The au- tocrat of Mars, a lion swimming in blood, he went over Europe tying laurels to his brow with heart- strings of the dying. "His haughty star withered kings, and his brow was never awed whether his eagles hovered around the Alps or shrieked amid flames of Moscow." At his footfall thrones trem- 28 THE MARCH OF INTELLECT bled, before his triumphant march the "frontiers of kingdoms oscillated on the map of the world." From the Nile to the Baltic, and from the Caspian sea to Hespania, his exploits were their history. This "archangel of war" met his doom on the "frightful field of Waterloo, where chance and fate combined to wreck the fortunes of their former king." Here Wellington's allied armies shattered the hopes of the "man of destiny" and the ghost of incarnate ambition strode from the field of carnage and left the world to weep. The new century saw the establishment of fifty new constitutions in the Americas and nearly as many in Europe. Through fire and blood Liberty had marched to the front and stood with its com- panion — Intellect. Before the century's close no crown head dwelt west of the Atlantic, nor did there exist a civilized unlimited monarchy on earth. Every nation on the globe had abolished chattle slavery. In 1861, twenty million serfs were manu- mitted in Russia by Alexander II. with a stroke of his pen. Four million bondmen were freed at the point of the bayonet in the United States. Greece was lifted from under the iron heel of the Otto- man. The oppression of Spain led to the revolt of her colonies in South America, and a dominion richer than all Europe was lost to the Castilian crown. The history of civilization is the history of the slow and painful enfranchisement of the human mind. From the monarchy of the family, the mon- archy of the tribe, the monarchy o\ the nation, and from the tyranny of the whole man has forged forward to the swing o\ individual liberty. From THE MARCH OF INTELLECT 29 the plains of sand-girt Egypt, from Babylon's des- ert tomb, from the wilderness of classic Athens, from the crumbling stones of once ponderous Rome comes a wail, as it were, a warning cry that no na- tion founded on or tolerating injustice can perma- nently stand. When Intellect breaks shackles from the brain it loosens chains from the body. When it masters a new force in nature it takes a tear from the cheek of unpaid toil. When it strikes an infamy from the calendar of crime, it adds a smile to the countenance of innocence. Every despotism struck from the roster of nations adds a new lus- tre to the glory of the race. Every injustice eradi- cated lifts a sorrow from the heart of the world. IN EUROPE. The Congress of Vienna — 181 3- 181 5 — assem- bled with delegated powers for the settlement of the affairs of Europe, and on June 9, 181 5, the ar- rangements were collected in one set of 121 ar- ticles, which was signed by the ministers of Austria, France, Great Britain, Portugal, Sweden, Russia, and Prussia. This Congress and the Holy Alli- ance of the great powers, signed in September, 181 5, in the main purposed to reestablish the mon- archical equilibrium disturbed by Napoleon and to counteract the ideas put forward by the French Revolution. One of the master leaders in this movement was Prince Metternich, of Austria, the instigator of the "Continental system." A remark- able statesman and diplomat, when Waterloo closed the career of Napoleon, he proceeded to direct the policy of Continental Europe for over thirty 3 o THE MARCH OF INTELLECT years. Intrigues and insurrections resulted from the conflicting ideas and interests that were at stake. Revolution was imminent all the while. A crisis was reached in 1848 when the people rose to rid themselves of "the powers that be" and the leaders they had entrusted. Metternich, Austria's diplomatic autocrat of absolutism, was forced to resign as Prime Minister by a mob of the revolu- tion, aroused by his attitude toward Hungary. Louis Napoleon was elected President of France the same year, and by a plebicite, elected Emperor in 1852. Jealous of the influence of the Catholic Church he sent soldiers to sustain the Pope of Rome in his temporal power. But the pen of Mazzini, the diplomacy of Cavour, and the swords of Gara- baldi and Victor Emmanuel were at work, and in 1870, while Prussia engaged France, united Italy divorced the Holy See from the last remnant of his temporal kingdom — and as a result of the Franco- Prussian war, an end was put to monarchy in France. IN AMERICA. The republic was extended, held together, again extended, and became recognized the world over as the refuge of liberty and the beacon of civiliza- tion. Its influence broadened the thought and tol- eration of the Old World. It liberalized mon- archies and tore the mask from class distinction. Its century of action and social experiment turned formal customs into obsolete curiosities. It has yielded material for a new period of constructive thought, THE MARCH OF INTELLECT 31 The evolution of man's conception of what con- stitutes crime and his notions of what are fitting punishments is one of the profoundest lessons of history. In British Europe, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, there were upward of one hun- dred and sixty offenses which were punishable with death according to their code of criminal laws. In many of the States of the Union the whipping post, cropping or ears, and branding with hot irons — relics of barbarism and heathen conceptions — came far down the century. Less than two cen- turies ago the ablest preachers of to-day, the pioneers of social and theological evolution, would have been burned at the stake as "heretics." But the intellectual horizon of the world widens as the centuries pass; ideals grow grander and purer; justice and mercy become less distinct; lib- erty enlarges and mankind's prospects grow brighter as the years sweep on. The ages of fear and force, of tyranny, cruelty, and revenge are be- hind us. Are we not on the borders of the Holy Grail? CHAPTER IV GEOGRAPHICAL MARCH OE PROGRESS CHAPTER IV. GEOGRAPHIC MARCH OF PROGRESS. The course of civilization in ancient times was from the Nile and Euphrates to the shores of the Mediterranean. In mediaeval times it was from southern to northern and western Europe. In modern times it has been from Europe westward and southward, out beyond the seas. Following in the wake of exploration, the civilization of western Europe — including the British isles — has been car- ried by her enterprising peoples to every clime — including the two savage Americas, Australia, New Zeland, and South Africa — carrying with them the pluck, energy, tact, enterprise, and spirit of prog- ress that marks the highest type of civilization that the earth sustains. ETHNOGRAPHIC DEVELOPMENT. There are three primary divisions of the human race — the white, or Caucasian, the yellow or Mon- golian, the black or Negro. Each distinct type has many modifications. The Aryan branch of the Caucasian race leads the van of progress and stands high above all others in the scale of intellectual and ethical advancement. It comprises the following subdivisions : I. Celtic nations, including the Irish, Welsh, Scots, and the Bretons of France. 35 36 THE MARCH OF INTELLECT 2. Germanic nations, comprising the Germans, Anglo-Saxons — English — Dutch and Scandina- vians. 3. Romanic nations, including the Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese, and the French, and modern Greeks. 4. Slavonic nations, comprising part of the Russians, Poles, Croats, and Siberians. The ancient Greeks and the Hindus also belong to this category, but cannot be said to be nations at present. It is not so much susceptibility, as will force, that causes peoples, nationalities, types, and families of the human race to distinguish themselves in the pursuit of the higher ideals of life. As now constituted, the British, German, and French peoples are preeminently the leaders in the world's progress. They present a wider range of human ability, with a larger proportion of genius and high talent, and a higher average of will power and moral force than any others. All experience shows that the English-speaking people of the world have out-stripped all others in all history in estab- lishing and operating representative government. This in itself is proof positive evidence of the su- periority of the citizenship of the Anglo-Saxon race. The United States of America has been the cos- mopolitan rendezvous of all the European races and nationalities — the flower (^i the human race — and here man's greatest achievements in material progress and domestic advancement are to be found. THE MARCH OF INTELLECT 37 CUMULATIVE ARTS. All art, science, and progress come from the con- structive force of intellect. Material advancement is necessarily cumulative. The Nineteenth Century capped the climax of the ages on this score. It re- ceived from all its predecessors not one self-pro- pelling machine; but left as a legacy to future ages the locomotive, the steamship, the automobile, and the electric car. It inherited the goose quil and the stylus and added thereto the steel pen, the type- writer, and the linotype. It received the scythe and the sickle and gave the mower and the self- binder, the giant header and thrasher. It found the flail and made the great self -stacking steam thresher. It received the little hand printing press, which could furnish about fifty impressions per hour, and gave the great steam propelled perfecting "double sextuple" press, capable of printing one hundred and twenty miles of paper every hour. It will print, cut, paste, fold, count, and deliver one hundred and eighty thousand eight-page dailies an hour, three thousand a minute, fifty a second ! The century began with the simple spinning wheel and spinning "jenny" and hand loom, and ended with the great spinning factories and giant power looms, rolling out miles of fantastically woven fabrics of every conceivable pattern. It was given the art of knitting by hand and gave a machine which knits like the magic fingers of fairies moved by the elfin wand of the magician. It added to gunpowder nitroglycerin and dynamite. It received the tal- low dip and give the arc light. It was left the gal- vanic battery and gave the wondrous dynamo. It 38 THE MARCH OF INTELLECT went from the flint lock gun to the automatic rapid- firing rifles and the monstrous Krupp cannon capa- ble of shooting pointed steel bullets through score- inch-thick plates of solid steel. From sailing crafts it stepped to the panting greyhounds of the sea. For the battle ship Constitution it launched the Oregon, before whose power nations trembled. From wooden and stone structures it moved to fire- proof sky-scrapers of steel, towering three hun- dred feet in the air. It substituted for the signal fire and messenger, the telegraph and telephone: five million miles of overland and 170.000 miles of submarine wires, making a whispering gallery of the world ; over these threads of ore, taken from the mountains, are transmitted two hundred million messages a year! At the beginning of the century the practical uses of electricity were unknown. At the close its various applications were the flower of material progress. Inspired by its mystic force, and spurred to action by desire, Mind invoked the genius of in- vention, and lo! the fire of Jove locked arms with the Bride of Humanity. It lights her houses, halls, temples, and streets ; it carries to and fro the urban hosts, warms without ashes and smoke, talks any language any distance, nor brooks oceans nor mountains, zones nor climates; it fans her cheeks when they arc warm and lights her study when she reads; it lights the caverns of the deep from ves- sels that dive the briny waves; its X-ray parts with mystic skill the flesh that clothes the jointed frame. The century substituted for the blind search- probe the X-ray; for the writhings of the surgeon's table anaesthetics ami hypnotism; for the stairway. THE MARCH OF INTELLECT 39 the elevator; for the copying scribe, the stenog- rapher ; for the wooden plow, the steam gang plow ; for the crude grist, the steel rollermill; for the di- vine right of kings, the divine right of Man; for the ideal of Power, the ideal of Worth; freedom for slavery, culture for ignorance, tolerance for persecution, sobriety for drunkenness, and reading clubs for carousals. Women at the beginning of the century had never voted, and but few had received the higher education; women office holders were unknown; a blumer girl on a bicycle had never been seen. Ice could not be made in crystal chunks when the tem- perature was at fever heat; at its close the art had grown to a great industry. No one, when the cen- tury was young, had ever eaten food cooked by electricity, warmed by a steam radiator, toured in a steam yacht, or slept in a Pullman car. He who lived before these ten decades began to unfold the treasures of man's inventive brain, could not catch a speaker's words as fast as spoken, by shorthand, nor record their enunciation with a graphophone and reproduce them with scrupulous accuracy. He had never heard of the germ theory of disease or worried over baccilli and bacteria. He could not have his picture snatched by a kodak or kindle a fire with a lucifer match. He could not foretell the coming of a rain, cold wave, or cyclone. He had never seen a kinetoscope turn out a prize fight, or reproduce the world's tragedies. He had never transformed forests into palaces by the use of the circular saw. He knew nothing of geology, and had never seen Neptune or Ceres. He had not measured distances between solar orbs, nor knew 4 o THE MARCH OF INTELLECT of their composition and weight. He had heard of oxygen, but had never heard of liquid air. He had not evolved the atomic theory of the constitu- tion of matter, the theory of the conservation of energy, or the science of evolution. He had no free libraries, and but few free schools. He could not buy a paper for a penny and learn all the happen- ings of the world the day before. He had never sailed through the Suez Canal or crossed a river on an iron bridge. He had never mined or drilled with hydraulic power, or tunneled mountains with dynamite — for an iron track. He had scarcely be- gun to unlock the energies of nature and to join hands with the measureless forces of the Universe. The meaningless mountains became the catechism of the ages, chemistry the catechism of the ele- ments, electricity the catechism of the lightnings, astronomy the catechism of the stars : With them man has unclasped nature's celestial book and reads the leaves of creation. CHAPTER V CHAPTER V. A marked distinction between ancient and mod- ern learning, is, that ancient learning was esoteric and modern learning is exoteric. The "Wise Men of the East" were not educational evangelists. The general diffusion of knowledge was no part of their purpose. In the nineteenth century it became the paramount issue of society. At no time in the world's history had the desire for knowledge been so universal as was manifested in this prize century of progress. This led to the multiplication of schools, col- leges, universities, forensics, books, papers, maga- zines, etc., unprecedented in all the annals of time. In this movement the United States led the nations of the earth. At the close of the century Great Britain's budget for education was $55,000,000; Germany gave $60,000,000; France, $40,000,000; Russia, $3,000,000; while the United States spent $197,000,000 for the education of its rising genera- tion and the enlightenment of its citizens. There were in the year 1900, 16,738,362 students getting the benefit of this enormous appropriation in the various institutions of learning throughout the States. Education develops a demand for litera- ture; in fact, it has been said that "the consump- tion of paper is the measure of a people's culture." 43 44 THE MARCH OF INTELLECT At the close of the century the United States had twenty thousand periodicals of various kinds; more than Great Britian, France, Germany, Russia, In- dia, and China. There were single papers with a weekly circulation of a million copies. There were fifteen journals in the city of New York alone that consumed two hundred and seventy million pounds of paper a year, valued at five million four hundred thousand dollars. This thirty-five thou- sand tons of paper is equivalent to one million three hundred and fifty thousand miles of paper, not from four thousand miles a day — enough to cr the continent four times and dip into the seas. A one-cent morning paper could not pay its white paper bills without the enormous receipts from ad- vertising. This paper is made from pulp — ground, principally, from the spruce tree.-, — ^ There were one hundred thousand post offices in this country in 1800 and handled two thousand pieces of mail a day. In 1900 there were over sixty-seven thousand post offices, and more than eight thousand letters and packages dropped into the mail boxes every minute. The annual revenue of the service fell short of $50,000 in 1800 and ex- ceeded $110,000,000 in 1900. The length of mail routes jumped from two thousand miles to forty- one times the circumference of the globe. The de- partment handled eight billion pieces of mail a year. There was not a railroad in the world in 1800. and in [900 480,000 miles, and .250,000 miles v in the United States in [909. They were valued at ten billion dollar^; earned Si .Soo.OOO.OOO, and to run them $900,000,000; their passenger traffic THE MARCH OF INTELLECT 45 equaled seven times the entire population of the coun- try — annually — at the beginning of each century. Industrial and commercial machinery increased power thirty fold. The economic conditions and forces of the world became revolutionized. These changed conditions gave rise to social and economic problems that this century must solve. All wise plans for the future must reckon with the changes wrought by modern machinery and organization of industry. The higher organization of industry for half a century has engaged the kind of minds that once founded colonies, built cathedrals, led armies, and practiced statecraft. When the time comes that people resolve to take over the collective material of their life, they will find the systemization ready for them. Work will become less and less a means of breadwinning and more and more a form of noble exercise of faculties. The artist always found joy in his work; the man's business should be his greatest pleasure. It remains for the future to make it possible for each to work in his adapted field of effort, and secure equity between laborers and managers. The Nineteenth Century closed and the TWENTIETH CENTURY OPENED with this economic issue, in its multifarious forms, pressing for solution. The growth of ideas and the interdependence of modernized industry has brought the race face to face with conditions hitherto un- known. Intellect sees a way to eliminate waste, un- necessary friction, and commercial injustice, but caste and privilege are intrenched in nature, cus- 46 THE MARCH OF INTELLECT torn, and law, and will not lose their grip on the limbs of industry till forced to do so by the intelli- gence of labor itself. "New occasions teach new duties; time makes ancient good uncouth; They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of truth; Lo ! before us gleam her camp fires ; we ourselves must pil- grims be, Launch our 'Mayflower' and steer boldly through the desper- ate winter sea ; Nor attempt the future's portal with the past's blood-rusted key." Nothing abides but mind. The tragic glare that fills the past is waning. There is a decline in war, despotism, theocracy, slavery, and the scaf- fold. Crowns are vulgarized, the plume is abased, war is losing its glory, usurpation is circum- scribed, the blood-reeking victors of the past's apocalyptic group are looked upon with commisera- tion. The clouds between the truth and the brain of man have been pierced and cleared by the search- light of reason. The gag between the teeth of the race has been broken, and a stammering has grown to a speech, and the speech to a gospel which pro- ceeds from the bruised lips of the serf, the slave, the vassal, the pariah, and the honored toiler. Man's estimates of ways of life, views of success, wholesome living, and true happiness shift points of view with the march of progress. CHAPTER VI ULTIMATE KNOWLEDGE CHAPTER VI. ULTIMATE KNOWLEDGE. There is no Ultimate science. Final mystery has never been solved. Philosophy widens the horizon of wonders, and the broader the view the thicker and higher the Alps of phenomena rise to bewilder and enchant. We do not understand the essential nature of Ether, Matter, Energy, Space, Time, Electricity, Magnetism, Repulsion, Heat, Cold, Light, Dark- ness, Mind, Life, Death, Eternity, Infinity, Spirit, God. The inscrutable is reached in every field of philosophic research, but the insatiable desire for knowledge urges us irresistibly to push inquiry to its furthest limits, and man's highest pleasures are derived from learning. The march of intellect is measured by the mas- tery of the human mind over the forces of nature: Civilisation is determined by this mastery, and the application of moral principles in the every-day life of the people. Finite intellect may be incapable of ultimate knowledge ; but if we cannot know all, it is not in the least true that we can know nothing. The absolute and constant we may fail to grasp, but, nevertheless, the relations between its various modes or forms, and the relation to our own being, are not only open to our investigation but can be 49 50 THE MARCH OF INTELLECT known more or less completely. The knowledge we acquire, if not complete, is real knowledge, as far as it goes. Present theories may some day be superseded by better ones, but none the less present ones serve as stepping stones for future systems; just as Astrology was the means of introducing Astronomy, and Alchemy of Chemistry. The whole world around us, and the whole world within us, are ruled by law. And yet there is no such thing as Natural Law in the sense of a sub- stance, entity, or ruling force. The word law is a term used to express a relation of things. Laws of nature cause nothing, in the sense of operating as active forces. They are the constant expression of relationship, not operators; processes, not pow- ers. It is the glory of Newton to have proved that the material objects of the universe attract each other according to a definite mathematical law, by which all the celestial and terrestrial motions of bodies are regulated. But he did not discover Grav- ity — that is not yet discovered. He discovered its law, which is gravitation, but not the force itself. It has been discovered by chemists that the minutest particles of matter, in their actions and re- actions, obey a corresponding law, and that every chemical compound has a mathematical constitu- tion as fixed as that of the solar system. There is no substance or element, from atom to milky way. but is pervaded throughout its innermost consti- tution by the harmony of numbers. The crystal silica, the polished and tinted sea shell, the shimmer- ing wavelet, the fleecy cloud, the painted wing of the butterfly, the volcano, earthquake, and cyclone, all proclaim the universality of law. THE MARCH OF INTELLECT 51 How does dead matter become endowed with vital and orderly activity? What is it that causes what we call "organic life"? What accounts for the variation in species? What is it that evolves what we call form-life? What is this life principle that animates and builds from inert matter the con- scious sentient beings of earth? There is a period in the development of every tissue and every living thing when there are no structural peculiarities to it. Nor can we form any notion of the nature of the growth or creature to be formed by the bio- plasm. Chemical analysis reveals that this material point at which all life starts, consists of a clear, structureless, jelly-like substance composed of Car- bon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Nitrogen. This for- mal basis of all life is called Protoplasm. It is not only the structural unit with which all living bodies start in life, but with which they are built up. But there is a mysterious something in this pro- toplastic germ that no microscope can reveal and no analysis can reach. This something we call vital force. All phenomena of growth in the vegetable and animal kingdom are referred back to vital force, supplemented by environment. This vital force is a skillful artist who works in conformity to type. He does not work at random, but ac- cording to law. Biological chemistry defines life as a series of fermentations; for every vital func- tion a ferment, and a series produces a type; that every step in the process of assimilation or nutri- tion is presided over by a special ferment, and the sum of activities of a certain plan, a life. But whence the plan or what may be the molecular proc- esses by which fermentation — which is destructive 52 THE MARCH OF INTELLECT — is turned into organic building is as yet beyond the claim of knowledge. All observed phenomena can be intellectually traced through a series of ul- terior causes that gradually converge toward a cen- tre. All the diversity of the universe is apparently referrable to unseen Physical, Vital, Mental, or Spiritual forces. But what these are and what is anterior to them is not known. We conceive of En- ergy as something different from Matter; but we never know either Force or Energy except in con- nection with matter. Mystery begins where knowledge ends. Any- thing is simple when understood. As yet our life is surrounded with mystery. There is a universe of life, a realm of intelligence, a world of activity, so small, so infinitely infinitesimal that the human eye fails to detect it and the human senses to take cognizance thereof; the microscope reveals millions, the stronger the glass the more are revealed. Each drop of stagnant water contains a world of animate creatures, swimming with the freedom of the fish in the sea. Colonies of insects graze on leaves as cattle on the plains. A mite makes five hundred steps in a second. A house fly has eight regiments of eyes; a butterfly of a certain species has twenty- five thousand eyes; their wings are feathered. Mould is a forest of beautiful trees, i fairs are hollow tubes covered with spears. Animalcules have been found in a common grain of sand. Or- ganic life has been traced so small that it would take a score of millions to equal a mite. There are species of insects whose three score ami ten is a span of a moment. We talk as glibly of molecules as we do of rocks THE MARCH OF INTELLECT 53 and mountains, but no one ever saw these final di- visions of matter. We perceive by reason, and ar- rive at conclusions by deduction, facts in science which we do not receive by direct communication through the physical senses. Every substance is supposed to be made up of molecules, which, in turn, are composed of atoms, and that these atoms do not touch each other, but have their motions, and are held together by molecular attraction — chemical affinity. An atom is computed to be one fifty-millionth of an inch in diameter. It has been calculated that particles of albumen one eighty- thousandth of an inch in diameter contain some one hundred and twenty-five millions of molecules, and of water, eight billions. We are limited from ever seeing such small particles by the very nature of light itself. Sound is defined as the sensation produced on us when the vibrations of the air strike on the drum of the ear. When they are few the sound is deep ; as they increase in number it becomes shriller; but when they reach a certain limit per second, about 4,000 (or perhaps many more in the perfect ear) they cease to be audible. Music, a succession of harmonious sounds, with its slender outfit of seven notes in the scale, is one of the greatest of the arts and the interpreter of the emotions. Expressive of all we feel, it trans- mutes and wafts to the whispering gallery of the soul the heart's perfume. Its melodies charm in love's bright morning, its allegro vivace cheers am- bition's way, and its mysterioso greets us in the shadows. A tune for every mood, a song for every hope, a dirge for every grief, a trill for every fear, 54 THE MARCH OF INTELLECT a march for every move, a con transports for every triumph. The ear, with only a quarter of an inch of sur- face and the thinness of one two hundred and fif- tieth part of an inch, and that thinness divided into three layers, and yet, so strange a contrivance that the waves of every sound, whether the crash of an avalanche or the hum of a bee, the peal of a thun- derbolt or the whisper of a child, break upon its magic shores and speak to the consciousness with- in. Every note of the thousand-tongued and stringed instruments, and every syllable or word spoken by the seventeen trillion sound human voice must find entrance to this auditory vestibule in or- der to reach the throne of the mind. Light is the effect produced on us when the waves of rays strike on the eye. When four hun- dred millions of millions pour through the pupil in a second they produce red, and as the number in- creases the color passes into orange, then yellow, green, blue, and violet. But beyond and beneath the vibrations we receive are those which we have no organ of sense capable of receiving the impres- sion, and in these any number of sensations may exist. There may be endless sounds and colors of which we have no conception. The brain cells, out- numbering the population o\ the globe, receive and act upon impulses, and originate impulses, build- ing one to another as the life principle builds an organism from matter. CHAPTER VII CELESTIAL CHAPTER VII. CELESTIAL. The Universe is your home — are you acquainted with it? Reason takes the wings of the morning and ponders creation's ways. With our orbs of vision we look out from the world on which we live, and what was in chemistry marvelous in mag- nitude in universology becomes a mere speck in space. Of all the sciences, Astronomy is the one which can enlighten us best on our relative value, and make us understand both our rank and our rela- tion with the rest of the universe. It is, above all others, a science that cultivates the imagination. Its study has the beauty of poetry and the exactness of mathematics. Go from the earth to the moon, and one hun- dred and ninety thousand miles farther, and you will have the radius of the sun. Its volume is com- puted to be 1,245,000 times that of the earth. In the midst of the heavens he hath his tabernacle where he reigns, robed in his eternal fires, with his family of planets forever wheeling about him, basking in the beams of his light. Beginning with Mercury and ending with Nep- tune, he has eight worlds swinging in the balance 57 58 THE MARCH OF INTELLECT of his power. Mercury reflects his glances of light with silvery brightness ; loving Venus smiles from her mirror with calm radiance ; next, Terra comes with its heart of fire and poles of snow, ninety- three millions of miles from the foci of its elliptical orbit, speeding along its 577 million miles at the rate of more than sixty-eight thousand miles an hour. In this celestial chariot you and I are riding. We know with absolute certainty that this planet is in habited by sentient beings, as we can personally testify, but we do not positively know that there is another in all space peopled by rational creatures. Next comes ruddy Mars, dressed in his proud splendor, whose poles, like earth's, are white with frost palaces and whose milder zones are dotted with seas and continents. We cross the Asteroids and come to the prince of planets — Jupiter, with his five moons; and he leads his way belted and sashed like a knight cavalier on solar march. It would take more than a thousand worlds to make a Jupi- ter; a child three years old there would be thirty- seven here. We pass on and find Saturn, haloed with sky-girt rings and courted by eight roseate moons, giving her lovers always moonlight nights and holding ever above them a gorgeous bridal robe of brilliant colors. Beyond is Uranus with six sat- ellites. And yet another stupendous world, speed- ing on in the prodigious circle of his tireless jour- ney, cuts the (niter rim of our solar system, and along his gloomy course Neptune takes his cold and lonesome way, with one moon; the sun here being so distant and dim that it is scarce more than an exceedingly brilliant and dazzling star, without power to thaw the tropics of this far-away planet. THE MARCH OF INTELLECT 59 SIDERIAL. And what is in the beyond? Ay, rather what is not beyond the pathless swing of the solar walk? There are facts in nature before which human thought halts in suspense, and contemplates in hu- miliation and awe; such are those of infinity of space and eternity of duration. We find ourselves situated in the midst of the nebula called the Milky Way, the extent of which, traveling 186,000 miles per second, would continue for fifteen thousand years ! Thus, in the field of a telescope, our retina may receive the impression of a luminous ray, which started before Adam walked in Paradise. In this ocean current of astral orbs are variable stars whose light undergoes a periodical variation of intensity of brightness and color. It contains double, multiple, and colored suns. There are worlds out yonder which we might reach by traveling with the velocity of light for a century or more, which have suns of different colors. Imagine, if you can, a world where, instead of a white sun, the source of all colors, a blue sun rose and filled the heavens with its violet rays, and as it bent the eastern arch in its apparent course, a second sun suddenly arrived making the eastern horizon an aerial sea of scarlet flame, disputing the empire of colors with the violet orb. The red sun rises as the blue one sinks, and objects are colored to the east with red rays and to the west with blue. Again, suppose, as in Hercules, a world with a red sun and a green sun alternating the skies with scarlet and emerald ! Or take a system of Andro- meda, a large central sun of orange, and a smaller 6o THE MARCH OF INTELLECT double sun of green, built up of a blue and yellow. And what must the moons of these worlds show forth? A moon half red and half green; moons of silver and moons of gold ; a ruby moon ; an emer- ald moon, an opal moon! What heavenly jewelry! And what do eclipses mean here? What endless change in the shifting of the plates in the kaleido- scope of the skies! Can imagination of poets or the caprice of painters fancy anything more daring or gloriously sublime? What variety of light, what gorgeousness of shade, what unimaginable beauty clothes with supernal splendor these distant worlds scattered in endless space. And if these worlds are peopled, they that con- template these wonders doubtless do not appreciate the picturesque value of their abode. Custom de- stroys interest and that which daily surrounds us loses its value, and we drop to things infinitely less worthy of our thoughts. The novel and unexpected gain our attention regardless of importance, and if people came from thence to us they would be as- tonished at our indifference to beauties peculiar to this planet. The nearest star, Alpha Centauri. in the south- ern heavens, is computed to be over twenty trillions of miles away. Let's take a trip to it by rail. We pay six hundred billion dollars for a ticket. At what rate do we travel? A mile a minute, includ- ing stoppages. When shall we reach Centauri ? In 48,663,000 years! The "dog star" is three hun- dred and twenty-four times as large as our sun, shines two hundred times as brightly, and it re- quires seventeen years fur its light to reach us. Arc- turus whirls through space two hundred thousand THE MARCH OF INTELLECT 61 miles an hour, yet "it requires three centuries for it to move over the starry vault a space equal to the moon's disk." Our whole solar system is traveling through space at a tremendous velocity, not yet definitely determined. It is moving away from Sirius, and toward the constellation of Hercules; the rate is estimated at a million miles a day. The Milky Way marks the longitudinal direc- tion of the lenticular nebula to which our system belongs. All the stars which we see sparkling in the nocturnal skies belong to this cluster. So dis- tant are the well-known configuration — the Pole Star with its pointers, the bands of Orion, Arc- turus, Mazzaroth, and the Pleiades, that they ap- pear to those of the nearer stars just as they ap- peared to Job five thousand years ago and three score billion miles away from their astral homes. And are these all? Nay, we must exclaim with the patient man of Uz : "Lo, these are but a portion of his ways, they utter but a whisper of his glory; the thunder of his power who can understand?" Not yet are the wonders of the heavens ex- hausted. For should we stand on the world of the furthermost star of the Milky Way and look forth into the mysterious abyss which lies beyond, the telescope would reveal new marvels of extended cre- ation. Beyond the most distant star which the most powerful telescope reveals the background is flecked with innumerable nebulae. We catch glimpses of star clusters so remote that the light of them which we see was old when the earth was "without form and void." The velocity of light is 11,130,000 miles a minute and bridges the radius of the earth's 62 THE MARCH OF INTELLECT orbit in a little more than eight minutes, but the light that shows us some of these star clusters has been traveling with this unimaginable velocity for millions of years, before delivering to us their mes- sage. For if we find out at what distance we must remove our Milky Way in order to reduce it to the limit of an average nebulae, we find that we must remove it 334 times its length, a distance which a ray of light from the full bosom of the sun would take five millions of years to accomplish ! Think of that boundless wilderness of intermin- able ether, through which sweep on. in their grand revelry, millions of suns, planets, satellites, comets, meteors — making systems on systems of constella- tions in a universe of endless expansion! A nebula is a floating archipelago of gems, handful of float- ing glory in the incomputable far away, which, under the powerful telescope, blossoms into a beau- tiful pleasure ground of rollicking worlds! There are groups, systems and streams of pri- mary suns; there are whole galaxies of minor orbs; there are clustered stellar aggregations showing every variety of richness of figure and distribu- tion; all the various forms of nebulae, resolvable and irresolvable, circular, elliptical, spiral and ir- regular masses of luminous gas — all poured from the infinite fullness of nature's cornucopia. Each satellite revolves around a world ; each planet has its orbit around a central sun; each sun has its path along the trackless void, and claims kinship with a nebula ; how many steps might we go along this ascending scale before we reached the climax? The Milky Way may be hut a unit in a greater and more gorgeous whole, and the system THE MARCH OF INTELLECT 63 in which it swings may be but a fraction of a yet more tremendous scheme ! And on, and on ! How superior are these studies to the common preoccupations which go to make up the routine of our citizen habits! how little is man if he does not rise above the petty foibles of life; leave the follies of mankind to low ambitions and the pride of fools ; disdain to live the narrow life of the simple-minded, and turn with musing eyes to the great throbbing universe of infinite beauty and exhaustless energy that "Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees; Lives through all life, extends through all extent; Spreads undivided, operates unspent " Earthly things lose their value, and the insignifi- cance of what we are usually prone to allow to fret and worry us becomes so apparent that we can readily rise above them and enter the higher realm of thought. How glorious to feel with Emerson, that "I am owner of the sphere, Of the seven stars and solar year ; Of Caesar's hand and Plato's brain, Of Lord Christ's heart and Shakespeare's strain." The transient, fleeting pleasures and pains of hu- man life as known here, compared with the perma- nence and infinite extent of the courts, temples, thrones, kingdoms, empires, and republics of the 64 THE MARCH OF INTELLECT skies make us join with the author of Irish Melo- dies : "There's nothing bright but Heaven, And false the light on glory's plume, As fading hues of even ; And love and hope and beauty's bloom, Are blossoms gathered for the tomb ; There's nothing bright but Heaven." We are surrounded by the occult, and we live in a laboratory of magic. There is none greater than thought itself. It is Man's omnipotence; without it there would be no March of Intellect. CHAPTER VIII GLIMPSES OF THE FUTURE CHAPTER VIII. GLIMPSES OF THE FUTURE: CERTAINTIES, AND THE POSSIBLE AND PROBABLE. Everything operates in accordance with the laws of cause and effect. Life, individually and col- lectively, is a sequence. The present is the product of the past, and the future is in the keeping of the present. Things accomplished are prophecies of things to come. Every achievement is to the am- bitious an inspiration. The ideal is the basis of the practical. From the cornucopia of science, art, and labor, numberless blessings have been, and are being poured, and others will follow that will eclipse all that have preceded. The human Will is the greatest causation in the affairs of mankind. The simple produces the mar- velous. The mightiest engine moves at a breath; and the gates of the land of promise that youth covets in dreams swing open at the touch of genius. Better facilities in every department of human life are being placed in our reach, and it is for the twentieth century to regulate the operation of them and the interests in them so that the general dis- semination of the benefits will follow the dissemi- nation of popular rights and intelligence. This is an entirely strenuous and practical age, 67 * 68 THE MARCH OF INTELLECT and portentious of radical changes within the pres- ent century. Some in the immediate future, others more remote. Some things we shall speak of as a part of the future, many, perhaps, may think highly improbable; but we shall not separate what seems to us as certain from the uncertain, preferring to leave that for each one to do according to his prophetic judgment. MECHANICAL. It is the object of science to discover and explain the laws and order of natural phenomena. In the realm of physics, engineering, and mechanical in- vention, a knowledge of the laws of physical forces has led to marvelous results and is pointing the way to grander achievements. We think we have the means of transportation down to a fine point, but electric cars will go from Xcw York to San Francisco in twenty-four hours, and electric ships will go from New York to Liverpool in two days. Freight transportation will be as fast as our light- ning express trains are now. Farmers will haul their produce to market with automobiles. Aerial navigation will be practicalizcd. At the aerial sta- tion the crier will be heard to shout : "Southbound excursionists all aboard the Golden Eagle for Mex- ico City, Central and South America! This way for the Aerial — visits all European capitals this month! All aboard the Orient for a bird's-eye view of the Celestial Empire and the Himilayas!" We now talk across the continent by telephone and receive telegraphic news of events from Europe and the Orient several hours before they happen. THE MARCH OF INTELLECT 69 Wireless telegraphy has lately come. Soon wire- less circuits will span the world. We will sit in a theatre in New York and see and hear a play acted in a theatre in London. People in San Francisco will be able to see people in Ma- nila. The wind and waves furnish power ready for harness, as does the Niagara. The sands of Sahara will be utilized. The torrid rays of the summer's sun will be conserved for win- ter. The storage battery will furnish power for trans- portation and the alembic arts. Mining, one of the most arduous occupations of men, will be done almost exclusively by machinery, as manufacturing is now. INDUSTRIAL. As a result of the marvelous progress in mechan- ics in recent years the world's industries have com- pletely revolutionized and leaped forward at unpre- cedented strides. The power of the race to feed and clothe itself has increased incalculably. The story of the world's commerce is the story of man's mastery over the productivity of the earth. For the United States statistics show a growth in im- ports from $436,000,000 in 1870 to $903,000,000 in 1902, and in exports from $376,000,000 to $1,- 355,000,000; the excess of exports over imports for this country being greater than in all other coun- tries combined. James Watt patented his steam engine the year that Wellington and Napoleon were born, and ;o THE MARCH OF INTELLECT Watt's idea, materialized in the steam chest, was destined to exert far more influence in shaping the world's future than both these triumphant battle- gods combined. The industrial world will undergo a remarkable transformation during the century. Those who so wish will be enabled to enjoy the united benefits of city and country life. With the aid of advanced applications of machinery half a dozen men will be able to produce enough to support a thousand. The productivity of the soils will be vastly increased by extracting nitrogen from that inexhaustible source of supply, the atmosphere, and electrifying seeds and soil for gardening. The greater part of the enormous amount of labor performed in providing for domestic animals will be obviated by the sub- stitution of motor power for horse power and veg- etable food for animal food. Farmers will have their self-propelling wagons, plows, binders, thresh- ers, etc., and, if they choose, live in the then more evenly distributed cities. Farming will be a science the same as engineering. Farms will be conducted on the bonanza scale and fanners will be professors of agriculture, the same as college instructors are professors of literary branches. Submarine boats provided with search lights, grappling apparatus, and destructive weapons will feed millions from the seas. Ready-cooked meals fit for a king will be fur- nished from culinary establishments at a nominal cost. Cooks will be chemists and dietarians. Good food, sanitation, hygienic knowledge, and less posure will lengthen life and take most of the medi- cal tax and physical suffering from the millions. THE MARCH OF INTELLECT 71 SOCIOLOGICAL. Mechanical and industrial progress will lead to great sociological changes, which in turn will re- quire civic revolution. Physical science has developed and wrought phe- nomenal wonders, and, doubtless, still greater achievements are in store in this field of human ef- fort, but the sublimest advances that lie just ahead of us are intellectual rather than physical in char- acter and the advance social, rather than material. Man has been struggling actively with inanimate nature and physical forces and adapting them to his ends. There lie before him the world of the immaterial and the forces of society and the intel- lect to be treated with similar activity. In the good time coming education will be abso- lutely free to all. It will be more practical and less stress placed on dead languages and mythol- ogies. Studies will be arranged according to their natural relations, and in the order of the develop- ment of the head, heart, and hand. The aim will be to develop faculties and inspire lofty interests rather than to pursue the old art of cramming. A universal language will be taught in all the colleges of every country — a few hundred words at first, se- lected by learned linguists, so that every one may be understood wherever he goes — a complete pho- netic language at last, into which the most valu- able of every tongue will be translated. From the universities of the future will come young men and women trained, developed, educated in mind, muscle, and morals, ready and anxious for life's ac- tivities. A capable, forcible, alert, healthy, noble, 72 THE .MARCH OF INTELLECT progressive people will be a happy people, and true happiness is the rightful goal of all existence. We are made up of elements — one of which is gender. These elements should be well balanced. The delicacy of poise, the equilibrium of mental proportion and formation, makes the ideal man or woman. Different combinations make different temperaments and characters. The expert phre- nologist analyzes these and reads human nature as we read colors with the eye. Each member of the human race is the product of heredity and environ- ment. The highest ambition that parents can enter- tain is to rear a superior offspring. There is such a thing as happy and successful married life, and it comes of obeying the law of adaptation in wedlock. It is for Human Science to discover and explain the order of nature in domestic happiness and heredity. Scientific Courtship will be insti- tuted and guide fair Cupid to Love's Arcana. Then there will be no more ill-mated pairs. The worthy will walk in wisdom's ways and life be sweet. The noble will survive and the depraved become extinct. Genius will be the rule and not the exception. Hap- hazard matches will be no more and marrying for wealth, support, or convenience will be out of the question. Love will wear the crown and wield the sceptre of power. In the future human rights will be recognized without distinction of class or sex. Woman will have every civil and social privilege accorded to man, and man be held to the same standards that he holds woman. Whisky, tobacco, and narcotics will cease to be THE MARCH OF INTELLECT 73 used. Intemperance and demoralizing habits being abandoned, will mean more leisure and comfort. FOREIGN DISSEMINATION. The planting of results of recent civilization in all the regions of the earth is one of the most im- portant directions in which we may look for a de- clared exercise of twentieth century activity. The progress of the last hundred years, great as it has been in every direction, must be considered as con- fined within comparatively narrow limits of geo- graphic space and ethnographic bounds. The United States, North-central Europe, Can- ada, Australia, and European settlements in South Africa have been the seat of most active progress; Spanish America — all south of the United States — Russia and Southern Europe have played secondary parts in development; Asia (excepting Japan) and Africa (except the colonies above mentioned) have practically taken no part at all. The wonderful alacrity with which the Japanese have responded to the magic touch of the new civilization shows what may be expected during the century from other countries where the spirit of progress is being engrafted in the centres of intellectual activity. The colonies of the world, including in this term all territory not contiguous to the country by whose government it is controlled, occupy two-fifths of the land surface of the globe and contain one-third of the world's population, or about 500,000,000 peo- ple. Only about three per cent, of these are com- posed in any considerable degree of the people of governing country or their descendants — the British 74 THE MARCH OF INTELLECT colonies of Canada, Australia, and South Africa. The remaining 485,000,000 are of different stock from the governing country, and less than one per cent, of their population is of the nationality which administers the government. Practically all of Africa, Oceanica, and Southern Asia are governed by countries not contiguous to them. All of the governing countries are located in the temperate zone, and the territories governed as colonies or de- pendencies are, with the exception of Canada and Southern Oceanica, tropical or sub-tropical. In the colonies composed of the people of the governing country, or their descendants, the administration of government is left almost exclusively to the people of the colonies themselves. In the colonies wl population is chiefly of the race, customs, and cli- matic conditions differing from those of the home country, the governor and other executive officers are usually appointed by the home government, and these, with the aid of native legislative bodies, frame the laws and regulations which are admin- istered by the officers appointed by the ruling state. CHAPTER IX EXAMPLES FROM HISTORY CHAPTER IX. EXAMPLES FROM HISTORY. The Grecian states performed remarkable feats of colonization, but each colony as soon as created became entirely independent of the mother state, and in after years was almost as apt to prove an enemy as a friend. Local self-government, local in- dependence, was secured at the sacrifice of national unity. In consequence the Greek world was unable to permanently withstand a formidable foreign foe. As soon as powerful empires arose on the outskirts the Greek states in the neighborhood of such em- pires fell under their sway. National power and greatness was completely sacrificed to local inde- pendence. Rome pursued the opposite course. She expanded her rule over the entire civilized world by a process of absolutism, which kept the nation strong and united, but gave no room for local liberty and self- government. All other cities and countries were subject to Rome. In consequence, this masterful race of warriors, rulers, builders, and administrators stamped their indelible impress upon all the after life of our race, and yet let corruption — that ever follows overcentralization and unchecked author- ity—eat out the vitals of the empire until it became 77 78 THE MARCH OF INTELLECT an empty shell; so that when the barbarians came they destroyed only what had already become worth- less to the world. When our government was founded a new policy was inaugurated. Each new state added to the union was given local self-government and at the same time it assumed its full proportional share in the administration of the central government. This process now seems to us part of the natural order of things, a matter of elementary right and justice, but it was wholly unknown until this republic de- vised it. When Congress began admitting new states into the Union on a footing of complete equality with the old, every European nation which had colonies still administered them as dependencies and treated the colonist not as a self-governing equal, but as a subject. How, then, does the case for liberty stand now? What is lacking in the free scope of free men? Free action is wanted on just one point. We are free in matters of religion. There are but few in- stances of persecution in remote places of late. We are also free in matters of political practice; there are, perhaps, more exceptions to political free- dom than religious freedom, but still political free- dom is practically assured. But ECONOMIC Industrial freedom is yet a dream. So long as this struggle between capital and la- bor wages there will be industrial slavery. There will be no great change in the industrial system un- til the present centralizing tendency is complete — THE MARCH OF INTELLECT 79 until ideals change and the masses have come to industrial consciousness. Our forefathers thought they had established a representative democracy that would be a sure safe- guard against all tyranny. They did not know that they had laid the foundation for the free and un- trammeled development of capitalism — a moneyed oligarchy rooted and grounded in the industrial, political, and even religious life of the race. Un- der its domination the sentiments of the Declara- tion of Independence and the purposes of the Con- stitution became empty platitudes. "Equal rights to all and special privileges for none" soon came to mean the survival of the more powerful and un- scrupulous in the struggle of the petty gods of mammon; and from the industrial conflict emerges a Morgan and a Rockefeller, who, having the right under the rule of "Business" to beat every one in the battle of privilege, master the field and compel their class to unite under the code of greed on the capitalistic basis. Industry becomes as helpless un- der the domination of "trusts" as an infant in the hands of a giant. Industrial independence has never been estab- lished by man. Economic freedom, self-directive work, is with the toiling world no more to-day than when man, a troglodite, cracked the bones of his victims in the Delphic caves where echoed the thun- der peal and the battle roar of the clashing billows of the sea. Then the strong devoured the weak — actually ate their flesh. In spite of all the prog- ress man has made, in spite of all advances in science, in spite of all the blood he has shed for freedom, in spite of all the nations he has reared 80 THE MARCH OF INTELLECT and the laws he has enacted, the strong, the cun- ning, the heartless still live on the weak, the un- fortunate, and foolish. They eat their flesh and drink their blood, by a sort of artful transsubstan- tiation which allows them to continue to live and produce more. They live on their labor, on their denial, their weariness and want. The poor man who deforms himself by toil, who labors for wife and child through all his anxious, barren, wasted life has been the food of others. Is this always to be the case? I think not. We are fast passing from individualistic production to industrial feudalism. Every workman must find an employer. The functions of head and hand are per- formed by different individuals. The permanency of opportunity and the privilege of self-control in respect to one's work is as yet a dream. Individ- ualistic production is attended by enormous loss of every kind. Industrial feudalism brings order into the chaos occasioned by competition. The law of economy requires the co-ordination of effort, such as is in the corporation and trust. It is performing this service for the world and demonstrating that individualistic effort cannot compete with co-ope- rative effort. It is educating the people in co-ope- rative industrialism and preparing them for the as- sumption of universal industrial control when feu- dalism shall have fulfilled its mission. Laborers must own the means of production or pay tribute to those who do. So long as the petty kings of finance and prince- magnates of wealth can successfully solve the ques- tions of employment they may hope to hold sway. Capitalists must devise new ways of spending THE MARCH OF INTELLECT 81 money and of setting the task for labor. An un- employed person and an unconsumed product is a menace to the whole order. We have periods of "overproduction," when the capitalists tell the workingman, "We cannot employ you; if we do, you will be making something we cannot sell; the market is full." The laborer has received only liv- ing wages and his livelihood depends upon con- tinued employment. He has not been able to "lay up goods for many days hence," and the gaunt wolf meets him at the door. He begins to feel like an anarchist, and there is trouble. When the laborer is producing more than the wages he receives enables him to purchase and consume these periods of overproduction must in- evitably occur at stated periods. Those who buy service get the most and best they can for the least money that will secure it. Those who sell their service market it at the highest price they can obtain. This fundamental fact renders labor and capital antagonistic. The more one gets out of the proceeds of the work, whatever it may be, the less there is left for the other. The settle- ment of a strike no more settles the strike question than the capture of a runaway negro used to set- tle the slavery question. The cause still exists. The greater part of the surplus accumulated in the past by capital has gone into new machinery of production. It has made this the greatest industrial nation of history. And the world is being ransacked for new fields of exploitation that the demands for employ- ment may not be balked by producing more than the worker can purchase and consume. The open- 82 MARCH OF THE INTELLECT ing of new markets may postpone indefinitely the unemployed problem. But, in the last analysis, re- ligious, political, and industrial freedom depend for their effectiveness upon character and capacity in the individual. When the law of economic jus- tice is understood it will be applied. Universal ap- preciation of a right will bring it. The end of statecraft is not to build a great na- tion, but to build a great people. To do this each individual must have an opportunity to develop the best that is in him. To be tied down to a task or occupation is repugnant, and to have the imperious voice of Necessity commanding eternally "Do this or starve" is to starve, for it starves the heart and all that makes life a joy, and the higher aspirations of your being pine away and die. Man never does his best till he works because he wants to and not because he has to. To be forced to give up your individuality is to be vassalized. To be forced to contribute to the support of useless parasites in pompons luxury is to be victimized. Time and la- bor are required to do or produce anything and re- wards should go in proportion to results of efforts, and not by accidents of legal advantage, or the ar- bitrary rules of an antiquated system founded on force, cunning, tyranny, and greed. Personal re- ward for personal effort, compensation for labor on the basis of the value of the product or service of each person, these will be the industrial ideals of justice in the coming civilization. Since governments were instituted one of the greatest burdens the people have had to bear has been that of taxation. Tn the good time coming taxes will be a mere nothing. The causes which dc- MARCH OF THE INTELLECT 83 mand such large expenditures will be removed; much of the friction and useless expense of present methods of production and distribution will be obvi- ated. Our annual cost of crime is $600,000,000. Europe's war budget on a peace footing is a billion. When our industrial and social systems "leadeth not into temptation but delivereth from evil," there will be no need of pouring treasures into this source of waste. It will require no special miracle to do away with the nuisance of useless waste. When it is done the worst tyrant that ever ruled and reigned shall have been dethroned, and the race be emanci- pated from a slavery that has caused more suffer- ing than all other despotisms. Most of our laws are concerned with property interests that would be useless under a rational economic system. The living present is worth all the dead past. Why do we suffer from laws made by others and permit injustice and absurdities to continue? It is our proneness to follow the "Calf Path" of custom. Our ideas of property, of own- ership,, of duty and rights are legacies from the dead. It is outrageously ridiculous that the limita- tions and conditions and crudities of the dead should hang like corpses to the living present. The rights of the unborn are more sacred than the au- thority of the dead. Why do we exalt gambling on a large scale and debase it on a small scale? Why do we allow machinery to oppress the toiler rather than emancipate him ? There is only one an- swer — we are the ignorant slaves of the despotism of the dead. If we would make history and go for- ward we must brush aside precedent. It was when the makers of history stepped out of dead men's 84 THE MARCH OF INTELLECT shoes and tore from their minds the cobwebs of tradition that they led the world to better things. We allow ourselves to be spiritually, politically, and economically plundered by the ghouls of the dead. One independent thinker is worth a regiment of party-bound slaves. Those who bow supinely to formal sympathy, or disregard the good and great of the past because it is old, and listen only to history's litany of sorrow cannot bask in the dawn. CHAPTER X WE ARE ENTERING THE PSYCHIC AGE CHAPTER X. WE ARE ENTERING THE PSYCHIC AGE. WE ARE DEVELOPING "Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog In public duty and in private thinking." A respectable mind-hunger can find substantial food in modern psychological research. The elimi- nation of material obstacles to the progress of hu- man life must be followed by the elimination of ab- stract obstacles. We have passed through the age of physical force, on to the age of intellectual su- premacy, and are now entering a new and almost unknown field of research, that of psychic power. This field of energy has its laws as well as others, and we should acquaint ourselves with them, or we will be crowded to the wall as are the ignorant in the scramble on the material planes of effort Each form of vibration requires its own form of instru- ment for registration. At present the human brain seems to be the only instrument capable of register- ing thought waves. Although scientists are striv- ing to invent apparatus sufficiently delicate to catch and register such impressions. Though gravity is a phenomenon which still wants a satisfactory explanation, and we are igno- rant of the means by which distant bodies influence 87 88 THE MARCH OF INTELLECT one another, the modus operandi of telepathic com- munication is far more mysterious. The Rt. Hon. A. J. Balfour, F. R. S., (ex-Prime Minister of Great Britain) in speaking of telepathy says that the fact that one mind can influence another at a distance (if fact it be) is far more scientifically ex- traordinary than would be the destruction of this globe by a celestial catastrophe. "And to telep- athy," he adds, "the observations I have been mak- ing do in my opinion most strictly apply." If telepathy be demonstrated and its laws un- folded people will converse with each other without the aid of any mechanical contrivance whatever, though they be on opposite sides of the earth. Years ago when we wanted to send a thought across the sea we represented it on paper and put it on board a steamer. Later a fine electric line was substituted. And now Marconi talks from Massachusetts to Eng- land with his wireless system. By and by we shall probably be able to think across the ocean without going to the trouble and expense of getting up ap- paratus at even the shore ends of the route. But do not jump at the conclusion that present methods will be done away with soon. It was as late as July 4 1903, that the Pacific cable was com- pleted, extending from San Francisco to Manila, thus completing the first entire girdle of the earth by electric wire. It will be a long while before telepathy supersedes other ways oi communication. It is not for every one to do everything. But you should not doubt the possibility of a thing because you cannot do it. lie that never loved cannot un- derstand it. lie may say there is ho such tiling, but lie who has felt its fire knows better. Then man THE MARCH OF INTELLECT 89 on the height sees the rising sun sooner than does the man in the valley, and there are mental heights and depths as well as physical. We should not be hasty in placing limitations on the powers of in- tellect. The electric X-ray, which penetrates the body and makes it transparent, may be outrivaled by the psychic X-ray. How does the Hindoo ma- gician perform his miracles in the open air if not by telepo-hypnotism ? The psychmeter claims that the past lives in the present and can be read by sensitives at the proper call. Clairvoyance, me- diumship, mental therapy, etc., have their challeng- ing advocates. May we not be building a shining stairway up through the kingdom of mind to the soul's arcana? The distance between the finite and the infinite is growing less day by day, and the flashing of the signals from the heliograph of the stars are shining more and yet more on the visions of seers. Are there other worlds than ours? Are there human beings on our neighboring planets? We cannot as yet demonstrate. Worlds like Mars may be in hailing distance, and instead of confin- ing our knowledge to the physical make up and movements of the planets, signals of intelligence may be exchanged between us and the people on the other worlds out yonder. Mars may serve as a way station and pass our messages to Jupiter and Jupiter to Saturn and so on. And in the dim eter- nity of future ages the collective mind of our solar system may seek the assistance of other solar sys- tems, to continue the course of evolution, to fathom the riddles of whence and whither, and to make Mind the Master of the Universe. 90 THE MARCH OF INTELLECT ETHICS. The legitimate end of all legislation and juris- prudence is to interpret and sustain good morals and the highest precepts. The cardinal virtues of Duty and Mercy, outside of expediency, do not seem to have been brought forward by the great philosophers. However the moral standards of an- cient societies were not void of the higher concepts of human conduct. Those which prevailed in an- cient Egypt were in no wise inferior in the ab- stract. The motive held up by most moralists is still ex- pediency. Promise of reward and threat of pun- ishment are held up as our portion in this world I the world to come as the result of acts, deeds, and thoughts. And nature's laws all point to thi code. Hope, fear, and a sense of duty, which con- science lays upon the will, are the passions appealed to by this philosophy. Any act prompted by either or all of them is at best a refined egotism. They are passing; there is something better. Hope, fear, or a guilty conscience is a master that scourges its slave to his task. One deserves no credit for doing what he is driven to do. "What, then, is offered as an inducement for one to live a higher life, a life of virtue, of helpful' of service and aspiration?" If it takes an extrane- ous "inducement" to get you to do a thi; takes the sword of vengeance or a royal robe to turn you from wrong, there is something radically wrong with your make-up. All willful acts wrong are signs of depravity. Normal mind misdirect. Wisdom follows the law of happy THE MARCH OF INTELLECT 91 quence. Mistakes represent the wasted energy of ignorance. There never was a child rightly con- ceived, gestated, born, and environed that ever com- mitted a willful sin. All questions of human life are primarily questions of mental formation. The cause of all immorality is unfavorable, abnormal, imperfect mental formation. Mental formation is primarily of nature by heredity and secondarily of training by environment. To follow the path of duty, the way of wisdom, the course of a full rounded, perfect life out of pure love for Right, for Justice, for Happiness, and all Good, and to take supreme Delight in the consciousness of being in harmony with the eternal Law of Purity and the highest and noblest in all things, to strive toward perfection for its own sake, this is the life of the normal man of the future. The world is yet far from this goal. No legis- lative act has yet saved society from the ravages of vice, sensuality, greed, and injustice, and to-day every degree of savagery and immorality still ex- ists in so-called civilized countries. But there ex- ists a growing tendency to accept abstract truth and right outside of individual expediency as stan- dards of conduct, and to apply these regardless of sex, class, or persons, according to the logic of trained reason. The principle that well-doing, un- less it is disinterested, forfeits its claim to the high- est respect of men, is growing in strength, whilst the feeling is gaining ground that being and not having is the higher aim.. Everywhere and at all periods of history the theory of ethics has widely differed from practical conduct. And modern casuistry, if it no longer seeks to justify falsehood 92 THE MARCH OF INTELLECT and crime committed on behalf of Church or State, still exonerates royalty in the East and wealth in the world of affairs in the West and excuses the high corporate official or the industrial magnate of an infraction of the higher code by which personal integrity is judged in dealing with constituents and rival corporations. There are two kinds of selfishness: Egotistic and Altruistic. The former seeks self-aggrandizement without regard to the effects of its methods on the welfare of others. The latter seeks the perform- ance of duty regardless of consequences to self. Differing judgments cause differing consciences and conceptions of duty. But it is of duty as seen and felt by the doer that we must always reckon. Every one is supposed to delight in doing good and being approved of others. But when wc know not what the result will be, or, what is worse, know that it will not be appreciated by the beneficiaries of our efforts, it takes a self-forget fulness and de- votion to duty beyond the claims of any motive other than love of good for its own sake. To do a good deed, to help some one. to discover a new truth, as an astronomer discovers a new planet — these are joys that neither the brute nor the crude man ever tastes or can ever understand. When our conscience's approval is sufficient reward to prompt us to action at imminent peril of self "For the cause that needs assistance. For the wrongs that nerd resistance, For the future in the distance, And the pood that we can do." then it is that we are capable of golden deeds. When it is easier for tis to dare and do for our fel- THE MARCH OF INTELLECT 93 low man than to refuse — and thereby invoke the condemnation of our better self upon our heads — then we may walk that shining way made glorious by the heroes all down the ages to whose memory the living world ever gladly pays the tribute of its admiration and its tears. When the vices of the ages shall have been swept away, and the virtues of a higher life are allowed to bloom; when man, not men, shall rule in the re- publics of the world ; when worth, not wealth, shall be the badge of honor ; when honesty, not fraud, is the rule of trade; when justice, not advantage, is the code of ethics ; when work, not gambling, is the order of business; when production, not specula- tion, is the livelihood of men ; when deed, not creed, is the core of religion; when brains, not money, is the measure of a man; when worth, not position, is the estimate of a woman; when love, not force, is coveted of men; then will man be reaping the fruition of the toils of the world's worthy heroes who have patiently worked and bravely lived, nobly endured and hopefully done for the glory of man. If you have the spirit, in these days of transition, to labor for man's highest manifestation, give yourself to it, for 'tis the best that life can yield, and go read your reward in the Sermon on the Mount. PART SECOND CHAPTER I A HISTORICAL PARADIGM PART SECOND CHAPTER I. A HISTORICAL PARADIGM. Origin and Destiny are mysteries. Life itself is a miracle not yet fathomed, a prob- lem that mind has never solved. Man began the battle of life somewhere, at some time, and in some manner, but, as the individual keeps no record of his infancy, so Man has no his- tory of his childhood. For a record of the infancy of the Race he must, therefore, rely upon such knowledge as he can gain by reasoning from effect to cause, or accept the testimony of those who claim supernatural revelations. From the dawn of history to the present his prog- ress has been a tidal one. Out from the moon- washed shades of night, with its ignorance and bar- barism, into the gray dawn of civilization's gorgeous day he has come by intermittent steps. His foot- prints through the ages are marked by proud mon- uments and mouldering ruins, the evidence alike of human aspirations and disappointments. The estimate we place upon our achievements is a spur to further endeavor, and a distinct quality of civilization, but our modern material display is 97 98 THE MARCH OF INTELL] far less flattering to our national conceit and indi- vidual vanity when we read the records of antiquity which prove that Man's institutions are transient and met amorphic, and in his efforts to reach a more perfect civilization he has retrograded after each advance — the sea ebbs as often as it floods. One generation crowds upon the heels of another and the plowshare of time turns them into nameless gn. "All that tread the globe are but a handfull to the tribes that slumber in its bosom.'' Many regard the present as the highest advance yet made in a persistent ascent toward the heights of attainment, but ancient history and achae< I show that in many particulars we are not so near the summit as others who trod the toilsome path- way long ago, and in some instances but the pigmy imitators of long silent races. Nations have risen in their strength and gone down to graves ig ious amid the crash of battle and conflagration-, kindled by conquest and plunder, comman tyranny ruling with the rod of iron. Mankind seems swung in a hammock, one i pendent from the dawn of creation, the otl to the golden stairway that leads to eternity. In this cradle the spirit of human intelligence has been swinging to the lullaby of the centuries, as with the movement of a pendulum, forward and backward; thus has man advanced and fallen back, stop; never, but losing one vantage ground only to and gain another. In comparing ancient and modern civilizations it is well to note that eaeli peculiar order of human society — civilized and uncivilized — is Stical, and the estimate that is placed on any achievement THE MARCH OF INTELLECT 99 depends on the point of view of the one who judges. Progress is of two kinds — material and intellec- tual. Material progress is necessarily cumulative. Each successive generation may add to the stock of its heritage in material things without being one whit more intellectual than the generation preced- ing. Material progress will always accompany in- crease of mental power, but one generation does not necessarily have to be smarter than the preced- ing one in order to add something to its heritage. Step by step a science may advance immensely, but the advance does not prove that its last masters have more brains than its originators. We have risen step by step above the foundations laid by our pre- decessors, but the fact that we are further on does not in the least prove that we are, on the average, greater in faculties than they were. Men who stand at the head of modern intellec- tual life admit that the ancients can show the equals of any time. "It is an undoubted fact that the great men who appeared at the dawn of history and at the culmi- nating epochs of the various ancient civilizations, were not, on the whole, inferior to those of our own age." — Alfred Russell Wallace. "No greater men are now than ever were. A singular equality may be observed between the great men of the first and of the last ages ; nor can all the science, art, religion, and philosophy of the nine- teenth century avail to educate greater men than Plutarch's heroes, three or four and twenty cen- turies ago. Not in time is the race progressive ; the arts and inventions of each period are only its cos- ioo THE MARCH OF INTELLECT tumes and do not invigorate men." — Ralph Waldo Emerson. The general dissemination of knowledge or the means of acquiring it does not so much as indicate a general increase of mental capacity; nor will mere learning produce greater intellectual force. In- dia and China have had schools and a school system for more than a thousand years, and books are as cheap in Bombay and Hong Kong as in New York. But they have not secured liberty or justice, nor produced genius. The power to initiate and the quality to carry out come from within. A general increase of mental power must come about by race improvement from the biological source. The science of electricity has advanced immeas- urably since the time of Franklin and Galvani, but they showed the power of the initiative and with the same advantages placed before them that exist to- day, doubtless Franklin, Faraday, Galvani, Morse, and the rest of tamers of that unsolved riddle of the elements would be the equals of Edison, Mar- coni, Tesla, Bell, and Rhqfgen of the modern school. The science of mat hematics has a power, and sweep, we think, ahead of anything in the past, but this does not prove that our modern mathe- maticians have a greater faculty of numbers than Euclid, Archimedes, and Plato. And SO it is with everything which goes to make what we term our civilization. Every year travelers return from remote parts of the earth- with new tales of buried cities, ruined temples, and inscribed stones which tell oi builders who came and went like bubbles oi humanity on the storm-beaten sea o\ life, and left their meagre foot- THE MARCH OF INTELLECT 101 prints on the shifting sands of time. Every quarter of the globe furnishes unmistakable evidence of man's remarkable antiquity, and the mysterious rise and fall of civilizations. The modern world, with its wealth of ingenuity and exalted attainment, pauses before every successive step to take example from the remote past which developed the highest intellectual faculties, builded magnificent cities, es- tablished museums of arts, set examples of human ambition and aggrandizement, produced surprising results in engineering, created sciences, and gave form to government and law. INSTANCES. An expedition sent out under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania carried on explorations for years in the Mesopotamian desert, and exhumed the ruins of the city of Nippur. In this ancient metropolis were found, accord- ing to the ablest modern archaeologists, unmistak- able evidence of a civilization rivaling, in many re- spects, our own, and which must have flourished at least seven thousand years ago. They had a com- mercial system; a patronage of art and letters; a far-seeing appreciation of the good opinion of pos- terity ; had libraries, in which were dictionaries, his- tories, etc. ; public museums in which were paint- ings, sculpture, specimens ; they used machinery for making their wares; did exquisite enameling; their architecture included palaces covering the extent of a city block, with drainage system; their scientists studied astronomy and speculated on the movements of the stars ; in short, a city laid out and operated 102 THE MARCH OF INTELLECT on an elaborate scale at a time when man hereto- fore was supposed to be little above the beasts of the field. But, more wonderful still becomes the story of this city when the belief is forced upon us that it must have been the result of thousands of years of human development. Mr. Chas. Boscarven, the noted assyriologist, says: "Ancient as the in- scriptions found in the lowest strata of the great Chaldean sacred city of Nippur are, they are not the records of a nation just emerging from savage life, but of rich, powerful, cultivated, civic king- doms. Thus indicating centuries of previous growth and development." Some thirty miles from the present city of Ba- tavia, in Java, are the ruins of a once great metrop- olis. "Among others are ruins of a palace which exceeded in grandeur that of any in existence to- day, and exhibits an architectural beauty which is not surpassed by the most accomplished designers and builders of the present period." About fifteen miles from Palanque, Guatemala. are the ruins of the city of Otolum. They were surveyed by Captain Del Rio, in 1787. His account describes the "ruins of a stone city seventy-five miles in circumference; full of palaces, monu- ments, statues, and inscriptions ; approximately equal to Thebes, of Egypt." The city of Copan, in Honduras, brought to light by a band working under the direction, of the Peabody Museum, of Harvard College, tells the dream of civilization old when European man dwelt in caves and fought with hows and arrows. Here, on the banks of the Copan River, lived and ruled the nobles of an ancient kingdom. Their THE MARCH OF INTELLECT 103 houses of stone, paved streets, and canals for sewer- age, show that the inhabitants of Copan were ad- vanced in the art of city building. The temple of Stonehenge, in Scotland, was built before recorded time. Its origin is a mystery. The structure is in the midst of a chalk plain, and there are no stones like those of which it is made nearer than Ireland. They weigh about eleven tons each. There are four rows in circles, rough, uncut col- umns, each circle within the other. Two uprights, standing about twenty- five feet high, are bound together by a third resting across them on the top, and so on all the way round. How were those vast blocks raised and placed upon the upright supports. They prove the existence of a knowl- edge of mechanical science of a peculiar order that does not exist to-day. Here, too, is a tall stone over which one day in the year — the longest — the first rays of the rising sun come directly over the strike on another stone lying down with the letter A — for altar — engraved on it. This, strange to say, is almost an exact counterpart of the means employed in Egypt to establish a correct calendar. Our year, as we record it, is of Egyptian origin. The great temples on the Nile were built with long entrance of columns leading from the river to the interior shrine — sometimes lined with sphinxes or huge granite figures. The mouth was turned to- ward a certain part of the heavens, where the light of the setting sun could enter only once a year. The Egyptian astronomers would watch the inner shrine for the opening of the new year. When the red light flashed through the tunnel and struck the shrine the philosopher would know that another 104 THE .MARCH OF INTELLECT year had begun. The Egyptian sun-year was adopted in Rome, where it became disordered by the ignorance of the priests, and at last Julius Caesar corrected the calendar which we yet use, and to his friend, the Egyptian Sosigenes. we owe our division of time. Time leaves his enigmas as sports for human knowledge; and no district of the globe is richer in these spoils than ancient Phoenicia. Some of the grandest relics of this great nation's vanished glory are the ruins of Baalbec ; — a city whose his- tory is lost in antiquity ; its very existence unknown for centuries. Of its sun temple it has been said "That in no country is to be found so superb a monument of the inimitable perfection of ancient architecture." And "That its stones are the largest that have ever been moved by human power. And how they were conveyed to their places and so closely fitted is an unsolved mystery. It is not too much to say that the task would be impractical with modern engineers." The Assyrian empire went out of existence more than a thousand years before the Christian era, and as many years of its history is absolutely un- known. There was nothing known concerning it. so far as is recorded, for a thousand years after it ceased to exist. Babylon, "many times greater and more m; nificent than the largest of modern cities." one of the capital wonders i^i all time, the apostle of greed and the victim of plunder, left scarce a ve« her ponderous pile as the tomb oi her glory, for pilgrim scholars to study and learn. CHAPTER II LOST ARTS CHAPTER II. LOST ARTS. History and archaeology prove nothing more ab- solutely than that civilizations rise and fall, and that arts and sciences flourish and fade. They are the weather vanes of progress, the landmarks of intellect. A lost art represents a lost idea; a for- gotten science means an eclipse of mind; a per- ished civilization speaks of a shifting of the cur- rents of life. Wendell Phillips once delivered a lecture on "The Lost Arts," and said it was a medicine for the most objectional feature of our national char- acter — conceit. It is not my purpose to try to doctor conceit, but simply to present what I con- sider to be a few facts which I have gathered for this work. Rather would I consider the discovery of these Lost Arts just cause for encouragement; showing man's possibilities; leading us to the thought that "what has been can be," and that what is desired and willed with sufficient devotion will be accomplished. These fashioned ideas of the past are the surviving phenomena of human activ- ity, and indicate the course of human endeavor. They are the timekeepers of progress. They record 107 io8 THE MARCH OF INTELLECT the world's advancement, stimulate investigation, and quicken interest in the dim twilight of history's morning. ALCHEMY— CHEMISTRY. The desire for power has been the moving force behind every advance of mankind. For power over nature, for power among men, for power to sur- mount obstacles. The coveted power of gold prompted the ancients to try to transmute base metals into gold. Thus evolved the theory of alchemy, from which chemistry was developed. Metallurgy is the triumph of chemistry, and, per- haps, the greatest material basis of modern civili- zation. The chemistry of the most ancient period, in many respects, surpassed anything which mod- erns have as yet approached. Steel is an invention of the nineteenth century, but steel instruments were in use during the reign of the Shepard Kings of Egypt six thousand years ago. Iron is mentioned as being known before the deluge. An old sickle blade, found near Thebes, is four thousand years old. Razors are mentioned by Homer. It is said that iron was discovered by the burning of Mount Ida, about the year fourtcen- six B. C. It is probable that it was used for vari- ous instruments not long after this period. Among the Romans, two or three hundred years be Christ, iron was used for chains, looks, axes. 1 spades, and other tools. The London Med Surgical Journal advised surgeons not to carr\ lancets to Calcutta, to have them gilded, because English steel could not bear the atmosphere of THE MARCH OF INTELLECT 109 India. Yet the blades made in Damascus and used by the Saracens to fight the Crusaders were not gilded, "and they are as perfect as they were eight centuries ago." Saladin's sword would cut down in twain as it floated in the air. George Thomson says he saw a man in Calcutta throw a hand full of floss silk into the air, and a Hindu sever it with his sabre. GLASS. Our greatest glass artists are said to be behind the ancients. Not only did the Egyptians stain glass in a manner impossible to-day, but they welded it in the manufacture of regal garments, and made it as lissom as Punjaub silk. Nearly two thousand years ago Vesuvius covered Pompeii. In exhum- ing its ruins they found ground glass, window glass, cut glass, and colored glass of every variety. Miscroscopes and telescopes are made only from glass. Galileo invented the telescope in the seven- teenth century, but one of the most ancient sculp- tures of Central America represents a man on an observatory looking through a telescope. Baby- lonia, Egypt, Greece, India, and China all possessed a knowledge of the heavens before the Christian era, and they in turn are supposed to have learned of the stars from the Phoenicians. Jasen invented the compound miscroscope in the year 1590, but it was only the rediscovery of an art known at least as far back as when Nineveh flourished. Engravings were found there too fine for the unaided eye. The engravings on the ring of Cheops — B. C. 500 — is invisible without the aid no THE MARCH OF INTELLECT of glasses. Two thousand years ago Michael An- gelo wore a gem on which were engraved the fig- ures of seven women. The forms could not be dis- tinguished without the aid of a glass. In the Vati- can gems may be seen through glasses whose ex- quisite carvings defy imitation by any artificer of our time. So, instead of dating from our time, the microscope finds its brothers in the Penteteuch. THE OLD DYES. The art of mixing fadeless paints once known is lost. The royal color of antiquity was the Tyrian pur- pose ; — almost a red. The Egyptians painted im- mortal history with it upon the stucco of their walls. In their temples, palaces, and courts we trace their rites, customs and industries painted in undying colors. If we go down among the ruin? of the buried city of Pompeii and light up the rooms, this color flames upon you richer than any- thing we can produce, and as fresh as it was in the days of St. Paul. It is said that the walls of the Alhambra of Spain Still remain unaltered by the ravages of time, ex- cept in unimportant parts, and the colors of the paintings appear to have retained their bright: The Tyreans produced such gossamer linens of purple a not equal In Cashmere girls make shawls with three hundred colors — which we cannot make or distinguish — and sell them for three times ten thousand dollars. In of his lectures to his students that eminent art critic. John Ruskin, opened his Catholic mass book THE MARCH OF INTELLECT in and said : "Gentlemen, we are the best chemists in the world. No Englishman ever could doubt that. But we cannot make such a scarlet as that, and even if we could it would not last twenty years. Yet, this is five hundred years old." Writings on velum, dating back ten and twelve centuries, are as newly black to-day as when the scribe put the scroll away. The dyes of to-day, besides not being as beautiful as those of bygone ages, do not preserve the material as well. The best English silk, made by the best methods known to us, will have turned to dust long before a genuine old Indian silk has begun to fade. The ancient Hindus had a secret treatment which fortified their clothes against moths and insects which prey upon fabrics. To-day no plutocrat can. buy a gown for his spouse whose color can vie with the purple and fine linen of the Tyreans three thousand years ago; nor paint his palace with as immortal colors as flashed from the stuccoed walls and ceilings of the temples of the Nile when Israel dwelt in Goshen. IMPERISHABLE INVENTIONS. The art of rendering timber, certain paints, and cements durable, and of making porcelain mosaics, arabesques, and other ornaments, began and ended in Western Europe with the Moorish conquerors of Spain. The walls, beams, and woodwork of the ceiling of the Alhambra present no signs of de- cay. The British war office decided that the Moor- ish fortifications at Gibraltar, dating back over seventeen hundred years, were too antiquated for to-day. The sappers and miners found that the ii2 THE MARCH OF INTELLECT rock itself did not splinter before their axes; and when they attacked the black mortar which bound the stones together it splintered their picks. Dyna- mite was used; but portions of the mortar were dispatched to the government surveyor in England to be analyzed. They could not find out of what it was composed. The method of the manufacture of the cement used in the building of the Colosseum at Rome, and the paving of the courts and porches of Rome and Athens, dodged our cleverest chem- ists until to-day. Poor imitations are being made by a method discovered by an accident. The best pottery of to-day cannot be compared, either in durability or beauty, to that of eighteen hundred years ago and earlier. The Egyptians and Greeks knew how to glaze their earthenware in a manner lost to us. There is no living embalmer who could so pre- serve a corpse that it would last for over four thousand years. Yet the ancient Egyptians did this, as we have the mummies in our museums to-day. This is one art, however, that it would be well not to rediscover, as it could answer no laudable pur- pose and would lead to an increasing inconvenience to succeeding generations. MECHANICAL MARVELS AND ENGI- NEERING FEATS. Corinth stood on an isthmus washed by two seas. Her wharves were marvels oi ingenuity. In their construction whole kingdoms had been ab- sorbed. Huge handed machinery, such as modern invention cannot equal, lifted ships from the THE MARCH OF INTELLECT 113 on one side and transported them on trucks across the isthmus and set them down in the sea on the other side. Archimedes is accredited with having conceived the application of some of the principles of physics two hundred and fifty years before Christ; but the Egyptians were familiar with all the mechanical powers two thousand years before Archimedes lived. Their knowledge of mathematics must have been very extensive. It took exact calculations of an intricate character to plan and execute the build- ing of the pyramids. Drawings of strange-look- ing engines lifting huge blocks of stone have been found in Egypt. Whether their motive power was hydraulic, steam, or electric is unknown. It would have been impossible for them to have transported the huge stones they used in the building of the pyramids and obelisks without the use of machin- ery. There is an obelisk in Rome which was quar- ried and carried one hundred and fifty miles by the Egyptians, and the Romans brought it seven hun- dred and fifty miles. There is no record of how these feats were performed. On the banks of the mystic Nile are strewn the ruins of cities, pyramids, palaces, temples, tombs, obelisks; where civilizations have swept by like waves passing the "gateway of tears," and left mementos of the great human deep on the serf- washed shore of seonic time. Here magnificent fragments of art, monuments of human craft and ambition, prodigies of architecture and monstroci- ties of masonic skill — relics of history's varied anti- theses — lie in solemn ruin in three thousand years of gathering sands. De Toquesville says there was ii 4 THE MARCH OF INTELLECT no social question that was not discussed to rags in Egypt. The Isthmian Canal, connecting the Red Sea with the Mediterranean during the reign of the Pharios, was dug at right angles, to keep it from filling up, as does the straight one dug by the French as engineered by De Lesseps. PRINTING. Gutenberg invented the art of printing in 1440, but there is a paper in China, it is said, that has been issued regularly for two thousand years. Seventeen of its editors have been beheaded. WEAVING. The first spinning machine was introduced in Europe about 1420. But spinning and weaving were known when Europe was a wilderness. The inhabitants of India had the art of calico printing and weaving of woolens and linens in very early times. The ladies of Rome paid great attention to these arts. Silk was manufactured in Persia several hundred years before Christ, and afterward in Tyre and Constantinople. Wendell Phillips gives this anecdote: "Once a Hindu princess came into court, and her father, seeing her. said, home, you are not decently covered — go home;' and she said, 'Father, I have seven suits on;' but the suits were of muslin, so thin that the king could see through them. A Roman pO< "The girl was in the poetic dress ni the country." CHAPTER III MISCELLANY CHAPTER III. MISCELLANY. Natural gas was used in China four thousand years ago. The ruins of cities are found in Central Africa. There is quite a lot of evidence to prove that there was once a continent called Atlantis, which sank in a great cataclysm, carrying down with it millions of human beings. Greek fire is said by some to have been more destructive than dynamite. Phillips says that Solomon's temple had lightning-rods. Our jokes, puns, bulls, stories, and games are nearly all Asiatic. What cannot be traced to the shores of the Mediterranean goes farther East. "Many astronomical inscriptions have been found in the ruins of Nineveh. In the public library of that city there was a series of volumes called the observations of Bel. One book treated of the polar star, another of Venus, and a third of Mars. The earliest of these records are thought to date as far back as 2540 B. C." Thales, of Greece, taught 500 years B. C. that the world is round, and that the moon receives its light from the sun. He determined when the equinoxes and solstices occur, and also predicted an eclipse of the sun. 117 n8 THE MARCH OF INTELLECT Philosophy is no brainier now than when taught in the academic groves of Athens. We still go back to the "Old Masters" for art. Our temples do not outshine those of Jerusalem, Ephesus, or Rome. In purely literary achievements the noblest works of modern authors do not excel the ancient. Why, the book of Job is so old that it is lost in the mist of antiquity, it antedates the Chinese Empire, and yet "I call it," says Thomas Carlyle, the "Literary Columbus," "one of the greatest things ever writ- ten. There is nothing in the Bible, or out of it, of equal literary merit." "The whole book of Job," says Pope, "with regard both to sublimity of thought and morality, excels, beyond all compari- son, the most noble parts of Homer." Who to-day is writing anything equal to the "Vedas of India"? Max Muller says that the oldest book in the world is the "Rig Veda," which was in existence, com- plete as we have it now, one thousand five hundred years before Christ. Have we orators superior to Demosthenes? Sculptors the equal of Phidias? Painters who sur- pass the Old Masters who mixed their oils when canvas was woven by hand and before cotton was known in the marts? No military commander has eclipsed Hannibal, Alexander, or Caesar. Speaking of the Greek, John Ruskin says: "All our great arts, and nearly all our great thoughts, have been borrowed from them. Take away from us what they have given us and I hardly can im- agine how low the modern European would stand." Mr. Francis Galton, in his "Hereditary Genius" THE MARCH OF INTELLECT 119 — P. 342 — is of opinion "That the average ability of the Athenian race was, on the lowest possible estimate, very nearly two grades higher than our own — that is, about as much as our race is above that of the African negro." Most all who have written on the social condition of Athens seem to agree with him. "There is, therefore," says the eminent naturalist, Alfred Russell Wallace, D. C. L., "some reason to think that the intellectual high- water level of humanity has sunk rather than risen during the last two thousand years." One of the chief advantages of modern civiliza- tion over that of the ancients is the more general dissemination of education. Knowledge, discipline, and culture were possessed in high degree by the elect few even in the days of Babylon. Skilled artisans there were who built palaces for royalty, rivaling those of the Thames and the Seine, swing- ing gardens to please the whim of a queen, parks and courts whose beauty and grandeur would com- pare with their counterparts on modern Europe or America. The king had his counsellors who were called "Wise Men," "Soothsayers," "Astrolo- gers," "Chaldeans," etc. These men often pos- sessed extraordinary talents in particular lines, but they were far from being public preceptors. Ac- cording to Pliny, about the year of the world two thousand nine hundred, Zoroaster founded the Magi sect whose great reputation brought students from distant countries to be instructed by them in philos- ophy, religion, mysteries, and secret crafts of their exclusive order. And we are assured that it was from them that Pythagoras borrowed the principles of that doctrine by which he acquired so much 120 THE .MARCH OF INTELLECT respect and veneration among the Greeks ; Themis- tocles, too, drank at the same fountain, being ad- mitted through the favors of an Assyrian King into the educational sanctum of the seclusive Magi. As we are great borrowers of Greece it may be that we are indirectly indebted to the ancient Baby- lonians, the influence of whose literature is seen in the Talmud. Notwithstanding all that is now being done to- ward universal education, this tendency to hide knowledge with jealous care, covetous of its power, and of the fascination that adheres to the mys- terious, is quite in evidence to-day in the com- mercial world, in the priestcraft of Romanism, in the medical fraternity, and in many secret societies. Knowledge is power and is supposed to give pe- culiar privileges to those who possess it. Educa- tion is the drawing out of the mind, and is the re- sult of such a process as will enable the individual to realize his highest possibilities. The ignorance of the masses is the opportunity of the crafty few, and only by the democratization of knowledge can liberty and justice be maintained. Learning is no longer hid and guarded as the miser hovers over his gold, but has joined hands with the people and is the handmaid of progress. But, as we have mis of wealth, we also have misers of knowledge. Knowledge that is required of the masses in one age is obsolete in another. The information that is essential to good citizenship to-day was nones- sential, and to a great extent impossible, a century or two ago. Popular government cannot endure without popular information on those questions which relate to civics and the social status. THE MARCH OF INTELLECT 121 The education of the future will be more in the line of causalty than in the line of phenomena; more living philosophy and less classics of the dead ; more biology and less creedology; more civics and less political sophistry based on the prerogatives of wealth. CHAPTER IV EVERY DAY IS SCHOOL-DAY CHAPTER IV. EVERY DAY IS SCHOOL-DAY WHETHER WE WILL IT OR NOT. The lesson learned depends upon the relation- ship that exists between the learner and his lesson. Every experience teaches according to the suscepti- bility of the student. And it is the same with na- tions as with individuals. The story of life is a story of cells. The biolo- gist is, in a way, a psychologist, an economist, a sociologist, and a casuistric philosopher. Our bodies are but aggregates of cells doing the work of our organisms. In the cell is wrapt the mys- tery of heredity, and the relative power of environ- ment. Each cell in a complex organism carries on two kinds of functions: (i) The individual life function, and (2) the social function. The func- tion of the individual man as a unit in society is analogous to that of the cell in the organism. A cell, or set of cells, that develop abnormally, become tyrants or parasites and grow at the expense of other cells, become a nuisance to the organism. The same is true of men as individual units in the social organism. When a man, or set of men, be- come absorbants altogether, feed upon the sub- stance of others, rendering no equivalent for what they get from society, they, too, are a nuisance; 125 126 THE MARCH OF INTELLECT at best a diseased splotch, at worst the beginning of the end of the organism. The economic condition of a people moulds their character is a great measure, giving color to their literature, philosophy, and religion. But man's ab- stract ideals and wills are factors in all human problems. There are various kinds of hunger. We crave food, raiment, knowledge, approbation, jus- tice, righteousness, and on indefinitely; and they all have their office in social evolution. Many of the leaders in various reform and revolutionary movements in the past knew full well that they would be economic losers by the triumph of the cause they espoused. We all do things against mere economic interests in answer to that higher call of Utopianism inherent in every normal man, woman, and child. "Economic determinism" did not pro- duce present-day capitalism. Our capitalism is a result of a composite of ideals working through the mass of the people. It could never have de- veloped among the ignorant, indolent natives of Africa. It is the offspring of inventive genius, push, ambition, pride, culture, taste. But this com- posite of ideals has resulted in a composite of con- ditions that must perforce determine the trend of the future. If the ruling intelligence he that of wisdom the forces of civilization will be turned to account for the glory of the coining generations; but if the parasitic desire holds ascendency with the ruling forces oi our social organism, then the reaction will take the form of a great cataclysm, such as have wrecked the civilizations oi the past, and the primitive struggle of the race will have to begin anew. THE MARCH OF INTELLECT 127 Liberty is the power to exercise the rights en- joyed by the ruling class. Life in the aggregate is governed by the same laws as life in the individ- ual unit. Happiness hinges on the little opportune happenings and attachments of the heart-world. The smile and the tear is each the other's best friend. The loneliest soul that e'er walked this sad earth Hath had its sweet visions of bliss. The world, with its load of suffering, misfortune, crime, and ignorance, rolls on as generation after generation is pushed by the death angel into the tomb, to give room for those coming on. We divide history into periods and fill ponderous tombs with the accounts of the habits, customs, and development of barbarous nations. Yet, the his- tory of primitive races is repeated around us in fragmentary shape day after day, and we see it not. Nature has no fixed boundaries between her ages of development. There never was a time when men of thought did not spring up among the primitive millions. Barbaric instincts are con- stantly recurring to perplex and shock the sensibili- ties of the ultrarefined, and primitive specimens of humanity float like waifs on the surface of our civilization till borne beneath the current, or wrecked on its shores. All grades of intellectual development that have ever existed exist to-day somewhere on the face of the earth. Each stratum that marks the evolution of man from prehistoric state to the present, has its specimens in the living present. The Fuegian and the brightest intellects 128 THE MARCH OF INTELLECT of the Caucasian race in Europe and America breathe the same air and view the same sun to-day. From the wild jungles of Africa to the university halls of modern learning we shift the kaleidoscopic view and are astounded that man can be so God- like or so brutelike. In London we find the highest order of refinement and culture represented by giant brains whose scope of action is the world and cen- tury lasting; and side by side — in the "East End" district — those who represent a civilization as low as that which existed before Pharaoh dreamed. The stars of the elect society, who possess the grace of fascination and the intellectual polish that mark the highest accomplishments of human refinement, are contemporaneous, and coetaneous with the lowest life of the lowest dens of the darkest cor- ners of our land. Governments, civilizations, institutions, systems, races, and powers have arisen, flourished, wavered before the storms of time, and fallen — to give place to others which repeated the endless round of his- tory. The continents are alike the cradles and the tombs of many a proud advance of the human race as it led the march of mind. The underlying world of mind is the source of all that distinguishes man. Its mines yield the treasures that give to matter its meaning, use. and worth. Ideas and ideals rule the world. The ideal is the haven to be reached by the flashing of electric bolts of thought. How oft does thought, touched with the fire of genius, electrify the world and ex- tend the dominion of man! From the psychic throne go forth and rule every department of man's encyclopedia!! empire. THE MARCH OF INTELLECT 129 "As the mind opens, and its functions spread." We witness its force grapling with the elements of nature, the problems of life, and the lessons of the stars. Knowledge of the power of an idea is the most encouraging cheer that greets us on the way. " Sometimes we behold its might embodied in conquering expeditions, again in political revolu- tions, again in moral reformations, again in social transformations. It is seen in sculpture, it is heard in eloquence, it is witnessed in architecture, it is incarnated in legislation, it is enthroned in state- craft. The sea has felt, the sun owns, and the winds acknowledge it. It has riven rocks and ran- sacked forests, and tunneled mountains, and bridged gulfs. It has beaten back the ocean, raced with time, wrestled with gravitation, chained the light- ning to its throne, and equipped it for missions of mercy, wisdom, light, and wealth." Columbus had an idea that the world was round, and, spreading his wings of canvas above his small barque, he led the Old World to the New. See James Watt as he "catches" the idea of steam as a motive power while watching the simmering kettle. Pass from Watt to Stevenson and Fulton who taught the new force to drive the piston, and on down the line of busy thinkers until the earth is girdled by land and set with power-plants of steam, turning the countless wheels of industry and carry- ing the commerce of every clime over lands and oceans. Morse is "struck" by an idea, and the tele- graph encircles the planet. Edison evolves an idea, and "fire is brought down from heaven in the sight of men," and night is as day in every city. Bell gets an idea from the human ear, and the telephone 130 THE MARCH OF INTELLECT takes our very words across continents. Marconi thinks, and two thousand miles of ether convey our signals. Taught by history and science and urged by environment, and backed by an enthused patriot- ism and a sense of justice, Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence and a Nation leaped forth — a dream of humanity. Ideas are corela- tive. Many teachers make a school, and many ef- forts make a movement. CHAPTER V CHAPTER V. Ideas mould nations no less than individuals, and through them transform nature. The idea that gives you power to shape affairs in turn shapes you. Each nation and civilization has its dominant idea. "The idea of chivalry shone out the sole star in the black night of feudalism and vandalism. The developing idea of manhood has lifted whole tribes out of brute degradation. The idea of nationality has given the Jews a history forever without a par- allel. The idea of liberty wrested Magna Charta from England's tyrant rulers, wrested America from England's dominant rule, and gave birth and being to our great, free land, toward which to-day all men oppressed and burdened look with hope. The idea of personal rights has struck the shackles of slavery from millions once in bondage, and cleared the staining curse off the face of civilization. The idea of patriotism has perpetuated the boundaries of nations, stained many a battlefield with precious blood, and held the invader and oppressor at bay. Humanity's heart forever beats with the patriot Greeks who made Thermopylae's Pass their grave and a world's example. The idea of obedience to law and government has been as the Holland dykes, to check the inflow and overflow of society by the seas of crime. The idea of equality, nursed by 133 134 THE MARCH OF INTELLECT oppression and hunger, soaked the fields of fair France with her best blood. The idea of individual conscience and responsibility has built itself into the virtue and integrity of the highest types of humanity. The idea of duty has been sealed with the life-blood of heroes on every page of history — on the silent, unwritten pages of humble life his- tory, as well as those blazoned with noble names and great deeds. "A nation without a ruling idea is a nation with- out prominence, permanence, or power. Find out what the ruling idea is in any nation, and you can read that nation's history and predict its destiny. When Sparta's idea was physical manhood, Sparta produced the most perfect physique the world has ever seen. When Athen's idea was philosophy, she produced the first philosophers of the globe, to Greece, with her Apollo Belvedere, her Socr; Plato, and Aristotle, men have ever turned back in their study of philosophy and art. When Rome's idea was empire, Rome's sway was spreading over the world. When Rome's idea fell from rule to lust, her people fell to ruin and the strong arm of her power was palsied. When France's idea was glory, glory sat with the eagles on her banners and shone upon her lilies ; but when the idea fell from glory to glitter, tarnish came on the gilded eagles, and her banners drooped for a century. England's idea of comingled conquest and com- merce has made her mistress of the seas, ruler. from her little isle of great territories and varied populations, and the banking house and workshop of the world." Nations that have found a fruitful source of THE MARCH OF INTELLECT 135 revenue in their foreign possessions and learned to lean upon it, neglecting to develop the physical basis of natural prosperity at home, have become para- sites and fallen into decay. Dominated by the idea of conquest and plunder, Spain's dominion spread over the greater part of the Western hemisphere, with considerable hold in the East; but squander- ing tyranny learned nothing from history, and, act- ing on the principle of "after me the deluge," al- lowed the trend of humanity toward Republicanism and universal enlightenment to lead the race beyond her while she stood stolidly by her mediaeval ways, until the former owner of half the world sits amid the ruins of her vanished grandeur, "The Niobe of nations; childless and crownless in her voiceless woe :" — bribed to her ruin by the exploiter's hope. What the human race has so far failed to learn — under whatsoever form of civilization it has ever developed — is, how to keep the vantage grounds which it gains in its upward search and growth. The fatalist would say that these reversions are inevitable. They are inevitable only as the law of retrogression is substituted for the law of prog- ress in the economy of the social organism. Con- ditions are ever changing and forms must be changed to meet new conditions — though the law remains immutable. History furnishes no example of a nation that ever built up to any degree of im- portance and then went to pieces which did not al- low a privileged aristocracy to exploit a defenseless peasantry. Nor can an instance be shown where such exploitation was not tolerated that the people were not progressive, patriotic, and prosperous. A state built upon partial ideas, be they ever so 136 THE .MARCH OF INTELLECT true, but which ignores universal justice, or man's physical, intellectual, and ethical requirements, as it passes into the condition of fruitage, must de- scend to utter ruin and decay, leaving a land of antiquity where the polen of the human plant wafted thither by wind and stream takes hold and begins life over again in another way. What is the dominant idea of our Republic ? There is but one answer — Financial Dominion. Liberty, Enlightenment, and Internal Development have made it the shining example of power and progress that it is, but commercialism has taken the lead and civilization is retreating before the march of the God of Mammon. We are working under a system that renders business success incom- patible with social ethics. In our game of compe- tition there is no place for sentiment, the golden rule, or equality of opportunity. To be just and generous among financial pirates protected by law means bankruptcy and failure. There is no essen- tial difference between the taking of a competi- tor's business by strenuous competition and the forcible abstraction of portable property from one man by another man stronger than himself. The brute force of money is on a parity with the brute force of muscle. But so long as we have private monopoly and competition — with the chances all on one side — the game will have to be played accord- ing to the rule — no quarter. Why does one own millions? That he may serve mankind? No, but that he may make mankind serve him. But we need not get wrathy at our "captains of industry"; their hearts are neither harder nor softer than the hearts of those whom they exploit. The evil does not be- THE MARCH OF INTELLECT 137 gin with the act or actor, but with the system which encourages the evil-doing. Don't object to the re- sult so long as you sanction the cause. If one objects to being skinned, to be consistent, he must object to the rules of the money-changer's game. "Business," to-day, is the science of exploita- tion. Millionaires are the robber barons of modern commercialism. An income is the booty of civil- ized (?) piracy. Heads in the sands of com- mercial spoils cannot see these things; hearts of icy indifference cannot feel the force of love's eter- nal truth. A drone's income is a worker's loss. A parasite gives nothing for what it gets — so with money grabbers who gather lucre at the stock ex- change. In the seven years ending with the year 1903 the financial freebooters of Wall Street got over two billions of dollars from the people for water alone. (See Success, February, '04.) Fif- teen times more than it cost to free the colonies from England, and the merry dance goes on. Competitive commercialism perpetually leadeth into temptation and delivereth not from evil. It is making drudges of the millions and parasites of the few. The severity of the struggle for existence among the masses is too great for the sustaining powers of the race. Life is sustained at the sacri- fice of manhood and independence, freedom, and intelligence. To say that each one has an equal chance to get ahead in the world in this wild scramble of business anarchy and that those who fail are simply incapable of success is about as sen- sible as it would be to contend that every one had an equal chance to escape from the Iroquois Thea- tre, and that all credit is due those who succeeded 138 THE MARCH OF INTELLECT in making their escape, no matter how many they knocked down and trampled under foot in their frantic exit, and that the fact that many failed to escape is evidence of some essential defect in their character — demonstrating the law of the survival of the fittest (?). Our economic interdependence and social com- plexity is greater than at any previous stage of human development, and the industrial forces of society need systemization. The friction and waste incident to petty competition in individual enter- prises of a public nature gave rise to the company and corporation. The economy and power thus gained have developed that modern monster-tyrant known as the Trust. Trusts are monopolizing capital and labor is or- ganizing a trust on sen-ice. They are having local clashes every year. Capital cannot be utilized with- out labor, and labor is handicapped without capital. A compromise between them is merely an armistice. The process will go on until one or the other will be absolute master. Craft, money, and prestige are on one side, and numbers, necessity, and force on the other. The character of this last-named / will determine the issue. If sufficiently intelligent, labor will win — if not it will lose. PART THIRD LOVE PART THIRD LOVE. Let others have what e'er they wish, I ask one blessing rare, — Grant me but Love, and sir, with this I've others and to spare. When the world has discussed everything in creation, And mastered great Nature's immutable laws, The daughter and son will read with persistence The Master's story of love's pleading cause. A theme that can never wane in importance So long as the race on this planet shall dwell ; The home of the heart is the palace of Heaven, And when it is homeless the soul is in hell. Love is like a great ocean on which all may sail : Some reach the golden shore in safety after a bon voyage over its placid waters; others anchor in the haven after shipwrecks and storms that try the fibre of the soul; others are lost beneath the briny waves in the sargasso of tears. Love adds sacred and heroic attributes to char- acter, establishes courtship, institutes marriage, and gives permanence to society. Deep love moves great souls, shallow passions turn light minds. Love is a part of life, and he who misses it fails to re- 141 i 4 2 THE MARCH OF INTELLECT ceive the richest blessing of existence. It prepares youth for its duties and age for its comforts. Xo one ever forgets the visitation of its power to his heart and brain. At its best it "passeth understand- ing," and, "all other pleasures are not worth its pains." In the emphasis with which the heart prophesies the future while in the throes of love's awakening, and the profuse beauty with which it decks the nuptial bower and the spontaneous gifts of nature, intellect, art, and life are placed as trophies at the feet of love ; in all of this there is a nameless charm none can analyze, a supernal element that defies philosophy. It is not in its glory when it lulls and satisfies, but when it fires us with new endeavors and refers to some purer state of sensation and ex- istence than is known this side its elysian realm. Take love out of the world and all civilization would wither, society would crumble, and life no longer hold for us a living Paradise. Happiness is the supreme goal of man's desire. Above all things else it is the universal ideal. It has degrees and is gauged by faculties and tempera- ments. It springs from pursuing noble callings and achieving success in them. Man's destiny is fore- shadowed by his active desires. Every rational human being struggles and with upturned ej eyes searches for that mystic haven of happiness cherished in his hopes and dreams. Ask those with whom you meet if they are happy and how few will answer "Y< There is ever something desired that is not possessed, and this is thought to be the opposite o\ happiness. It may be health, it may be wealth, it may be knowledge, THE MARCH OF INTELLECT 143 it may be fame, it may be affection, whatever it is, it is apt to absorb more interest than all that is pos- sessed. And this desire for something else is the germ of all progress. Man ever struggles to achieve immediate things, plus hope, but unless there is a deposit of probabilities to draw against, its drafts will not be honored by experience. Wisdom draws on hope with circumspection. Hope, showing man ever something higher and beyond, draws out latent power and makes us delight in effort. Hope is prone to cling to imagination's visions. Looking up at the star-spangled curtains of nature's artful dawn we would fain reach out and gather in its threads to weave for ourselves a robe of glory. But closer vision would reveal No more to rapture than we feel When looking at the dew. "If knowledge hold an image to the view, 'Tis nature pictured too severely true." "Everything is beautiful," says Emerson, "seen from the point of the intellect, or as truth. But all is sour if seen as experience. Details are always melancholy; the plan is seemly and noble. It is strange how painful is the actual world — the pain- ful kingdom of time and place. There dwells care and canker and fear. With thought, with the ideal, is immortal hilarity, the rose of joy. Round it all the muses sing. But with names and persons and partial interests of to-day and yesterday is grief." "What is happiness?" I asked of one who had followed its beckoning hand patiently, hopefully, i 4 4 THE MARCH OF INTELLECT and uncomplainingly through the long stretch of his pilgrimage, while that vague charm drifted farther and farther from his reach as he followed. And he said : "I do not know what power gave us being or shall take it, nor what implanted the quenchless thirst for better things and the consum- ing desire for that beyond the present reach, but through all the troubled years man toils in this busy work-a-day world with longings never grati- fied. Though his lot be cast in pleasant places, along his pathway grow noxious weeds, the thistle and the thorn. In all his workings he follows the glimmerings of a far-off star: Happiness. There is no such thing in reality; it is only a beautiful dream pictured in the mind's ideal world to lure us on and give strength to fight life's battles and carry life's sorrows, until age numbers us with the old, and burdened with dead hopes, the tired head bows beneath the weight of time, and we pass be- yond the veil." "What is happiness?" I asked of a cynic, whose heart had been hardened by contact with the world's injustice and greed. And he said: "My life has been varied, and long, as men count years, and. in common with the rest of mankind, I have sought that vague thing called happiness. Like a mirage, the false vi iias led me. through life's fleeting years, across con- tinents and over seas; in lands of perpetual summer where flowers and tropical foliage, waving grass and clinging vines bloom forever, untouched by the crystal stars «>f frost, and in regions of perpetual snow, where cold, icy silence broods over the long night o\ winter and the stars sparkle serenely THE MARCH OF INTELLECT 145 through the darkness in the blue dome of heaven. I have been a guest in the humble cottage nestled in the quiet valley at the foot of wooded hills, in the cabin and tent of the frontiersman on the un- broken plains and in the palaces of the rich and powerful in the world's great cities. I have talked with the dwellers there heart to heart, and I have found in every home and in every bosom the brood- ing shadow, the unrest and longing unanswered and dread phantom of a nameless fear. Through all the walks of life, in success and failure, gain what they may, the one thing sought for eludes the seekers." I talked with a daughter of opulence into whose lap the cornucopia of this world's goods had poured to o'erflowing. From her countenance beamed glorious intelligence, in her cheeks was the glow of health, in her form was the symmetry of physical perfection, on her white neck brilliant gems flashed their prismatic fires, her apparel gossamer fabrics tinted, scented, cut, and fashioned to bewilder and enchant, her every movement grace itself, royalty sought her favors that it might gain by mingling its imperial robes with genius. As I looked upon so much the world craves I thought : "Surely there is happiness personified." And I said : "Will you please tell me what is happi-. ness?" She turned upon me such deep, searching eyes as to drink my very soul, her searching look melted into a pensive smile and she said : "Ah, sir, and are you too seeking happiness? I have no misspent past to regret ; I've felt the want of noth- ing that health or wealth could supply; I have in- telligence, and by hard work have won fame; I 146 THE MARCH OF INTELLECT have sought happiness with beauty, health, wealth, and talent, but " and pointing to her heart she gently shook her stately head. Finally I found one who felt that he had realized the cherished ideal. He was bright and cheery and his countenance a perennial fountain of joy. I asked the old question — "What is happiness?" "It is pleasant," he said, "to speak of it to one who really wants to know. Happiness is the ec- stasy the heart feels when touched by the m flame of responsive love. To have felt such deep and joyful love as I have known, and to have been beloved, to have stood at the threshold of that haven of man's dreams, where the world grows strangely radiant, and life's grim shadows vanish; to have passed through the heart to fair gardens where the sunlight falls on mossed fountains and the roses are kissed by the dew of love's morn: to have found that being whose heart met mine with full response and thrilled me with an ecstasy which lighted love's quenchless fire, ah. to have at- tained to such vision and rapture is to have laid hold of the eternal verities, is to have learned the true meaning of happiness and to have realized it here." Here, at last, was an apostle of happiness preach- ing from experience. And may it not be that he answered correctly, that the supremest bliss the human heart can feel springs from satisfied I Ay, we believe love satisfied is the acme of happi- ness. Love is satisfied when the one loved is the lover's animated ideal and its holy flame is fully reciprocated. True happiness, or the supernal bliss of the heart, is not found outside the pale of lo THE MARCH OF INTELLECT 147 We may experience satisfaction, pleasure, joy, glad- ness, comfort, peace, enthusiasm, exultation, grati- fication, happiness — all these may be ours from love alone, permanently; if they spring from other sources they are transient. The philosophy of happiness: Happiness is not gayety. Sometimes the gayest are the saddest. Happiness is not ignorance. Ignorance is a vacuum, a nonentity, a blank, a nothing. The saying that "ignorance is bliss" is an ancient lie. The little baby that coos and crows as it rolls around on its pallet is not happy, it is simply pleasant; feeling no pain, it is enjoying itself to the extent that any little, new-born animal might be said to enjoy itself. Happiness implies capacity for enjoyment, felicity, joy, rapture, heart-swelling, glorious emotions. One incapable of trouble, sorrow, grief, and the like, is also incapable of happiness. Happiness is a condition of the intelligence, with all its con- comitants. Consciousless, inanimate life is inca- pable of happiness. As the scale of life ascends through the animate creation the capacity for hap- piness, and for doing that which may bring it, broadens, widens, deepens, and towers to grander proportions. People differ as much in their capacity to love as they do in their capacity to learn, but affection and perception do not always go hand in hand. Here, please note, we speak of those capable of ideal love. Happiness in a general sense is the enjoyment of lively sensations of pleasure. Sensation and senti- ment are transient; being the products of the senses they come and go as physical passions or emotions. 148 THE MARCH OF INTELLECT Happiness, to be enduring, must have a more per- manent basis. Love furnishes it. Love is a pas- sion and more. It has a polarity the same as the planets and a magnetism as constant as gravita- tion. It is a triune entity. It is corporal, vital, and psychic; physical, mental, and spiritual; bio- logical, physiological, and metaphysical; sexual, so- cial, and platonic. When love touches the heart and opens up the divine arcana of the soul, when it declares itself to the one adored with anxious hope mingled with half-despairing fear, and 'tis found that she really loves in return — ah! he wanders forth, bewildered, lost, enthralled, unconscious of aught but the all- consuming, overflowing, pulsing delirium of ec- stasy that springs from the glorious conscious! within ! The stars of heaven are so many diamond gems sparkling in the crown of a universe of love, and the celestial respiration of the air of paradise fills and thrills every sensation of exuberant joy! It is the unspeakable, rapturously divine come here below to pass through the destiny of mortals and give a taste of the eternal and inexhaustible 1 of heaven. Friend: Be ye young or old. if ye have not felt it thus — have not felt a love beyond the power of language to express, ye have not known the true warmth of a great, pure, soul's sacred flame of love. Then devotion is a pleasure and service a privilege: but in the first delirium of intoxication it is that the dull routine of domestic duties 1 1 most irksome. • The mind is thoroughly saturated with and absorbed in the sentiments of the heart and to the flushed lover it seems deplorable that THE MARCH OF INTELLECT 149 should be hampered by such sordid requirements as the drudgery necessary to procure food and raiment for the physical body and the comforts and luxuries of our mental worlds. But if a young man or blooming maiden is not worth much in business for the time being, those who are considerate enough to understand the situation and be tolerant and sympathetic, give counsel and direct, will be gratefully remembered in after years by the cav- aliers of the heart. "Love," says Cowley, "is a great passion, and therefore I hope I have done with it." One of Europe's most celebrated characters once said that he would give all his success and fame for a few weeks of youth and love. He was evidently not glad he had done with it. Those who talk dispar- agingly of the tender passion have had some sad experience with it. Where everything goes well no one would banish it, but cling to it, as it mellows into wisdom, as the best friend in life. We are inclined to even agree with Tennyson's M, Tis better to have loved and lost, Than never to have loved at all." I would be glad to know that I could bask in its bright sunshine forever, its effulgence lighting up the land of Beulah, its glory filling the heart and soul with the joys of the holy grail : Give me health, hope, and love, and happiness is mine. To love and be loved spontaneously, full and free with- out reservation, to be thus blessed by the one who can inspire and draw out the best that is in you, for there to be no objection or lack of apprecia- tion on the part of either for the other, to be 150 THE MARCH OF INTELLECT aglow with the symmetry of a perfect union and the fervor of a perfect affection — that is happiness. Love, we must admit, is not a child of the will. not a question of want to or don't want to; it cannot be made to order in spite of the law of affinity. Love is not a creature of chance or the vassal of despots; it arises not by con-taint, but by the law of response. We do not love or fail to love because 'tis thought we ought or ought not as convenience or domestic preference may dictate, but more because we must or must not as it spr from within. After the feelings are enlisted, love is not much a matter of volition. But judge should precede, that we may bring ourselves the presence of the lovable, that we may ge the current flows, and then, when our affinity comes, love will come, full and flagrant, sweet and fragrant, whether bidden or not. Woman's best friend is the man who loves her. and man's best friend is the woman who loves him. A young man starting out in life can trust to no influence so sure and so safe as that which e to him from the one of all the world of w: he is a part, and in wl irt he worthily fills the supreme place. We respect strength and admire wisdom, but we love the lover. He who has been filled with love's young dream knows what none can know who have never felt it. He views the fair vis the glorious haven of life's glittering strand where happiness builds a stairway to the sku i, he is Cupid's own, touched by the torch that Lights the incense of holy devotion. His thougl exalted, deep and pure, and his daily pilgrimage one THE MARCH OF INTELLECT 151 merry voyage on a shimmering sea of perennial joy, whose bright waves touch a brighter shore be- neath the smile and kiss of heaven. There is (it is said) a sort of bitter-sweet sad- ness in the memory of one's first experience with the heart's budding passion. All tender emotions carry with them an element of sadness. Some ten- dency to melancholy seems indeed inherent in love, music, and art, and Jessica is not alone in the feel- ing— "I am never merry when I hear sweet music." What Plato says of music would apply equally well to love: "Music is a moral law. It gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, gayety and life to everything. It is the essence of order, and leads to all that is good, just, and beautiful, of which it is the invisible, but nevertheless dazzling, passion- ate, and eternal form." Poetry, music, and art draw their greatest inspirations from love. The glittering threads that shine in fiction's Cloth of Gold are those of love. The brightest gems that flash from the pages of history's ponderous tome, rich with the spoils of time, are those of love. There are times that one feels that poets should sing only of this one act in the drama of life — beautiful love. "Where there is love in the heart," says Beecher, "there are rainbows in the eyes, which cover every black cloud with gorgeous hues." "The greatest happiness of life," says Victor Hugo, "is the con- viction that we are loved for ourselves — say, rather, in spite of ourselves." 152 THE .MARCH OF INTELLECT FOOTPRINTS OF LOVE. The swinging garden of Babylon was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. It was the flower of Babylon, which was the gem of the earth in architectural wonders; so much so that "the greatest buildings of modern times are but evi- dences of her fall." This garden was built out into terraces supported on arches. There were pumps worked by mighty machinery fetching the water from the Euphrates to this hanging garden, so that there were fountains spouting into the sky. Upon this aerial Eden of art grew flowers, evergreen, shrub and trees — so that looking up at it from below it must have seemed as if the clouds were in blossom and the sky leaned on the bows of its Lebanon cedars. And all this King Nebuchadnezzar did to please his wife — because he loved her. The most magnificent tomb and unique temple in the world is the Taj Mahal, in Agra, Hindustan. It is the architectural crown of the whole earth. It was erected by Shah Jehab to the memory of his wife and queen. It is octagonal in form, of pure white marble, inlaid with jasper, cornelian, tur- quoise, agate, amethysts, sardonyx, chalcedony. sapphires, bloodstones and diamonds. The work took twenty thousand men twenty years to build it, and the cost was more than the entire expenditures on the Columbian World's Fair. It was being built while the American colonics were developing. "You have read Of the Moslem palace — The marvelous fane that stands On the banks of the distant Jumna, The wonder of all the lands: THE MARCH OF INTELLECT 153 "You have read of its marble splendors, Its carvings of rare device, Its domes and its towers that glisten Like visions of paradise. "Why rear it?— The Shah had promised His beautiful Nourmahal To do it, because he loved her, He loved her — and that was all! "So minaret, wall and column, And tower and dome above, All tell of a sacred promise, All utter one accent — Love." The whole Jewish nation, while captive to the Babylonians, was put under ban of death by an ir- revocable decree. The beautiful Queen Esther in- terceded in their behalf, and King Ahasuerus, at her bequest, saved her people from slaughter by obtaining a neutralizing decree. He granted it — because he loved her. Sometimes disappointed love, be the disappoint- ment from whatever cause it may — from slight, death, insurmountable obstacles, or what not — is transmuted into a new purpose, a nobler ambition, a broader hope, or a love for liberty and humanity giving will to dare and strength to do. Simon Bolivar dearly loved his beautiful and accomplished bride. The death angel came and claimed her — his heart was broken. He sat upon her coffin bowed with grief ; there he wept ; his filial hopes were with the dead. Rising there above her casket, he made a vow to her spirit before God and man that he would never marry again but would 154 THE MARCH OF INTELLECT be worthy of her and devote his life to freeing his country from the tyranny of the Castilian crown. He lit the fires of freedom and patriotism, and lo! Liberty stepped upon a continent and hurled oppres- sion back across the sea! A man was once Governor of Tennessee; he and his wife "agreed to disagree" ; he resigned his office and left in the night; landed in Texas; led a revolt against Mexico ; won, and established the Republic of Texas, and became president of an empire greater than that the Bourbons lost! More than six centuries ago worshipful, disap- pointed love, eating at the heart of a son of Flor- ence, extorted from him "the voice of ten silent cen- turies" of Catholic faith and creed in his "mystic unfathomable song." Had all gone well with this man of "deathless sorrow and hopeless pain," as he surely wished it, "he might have been a pros- perous Lord Mayor of Florence and the ten dumb centuries continued viceless, and all coming cen- turies had no 'Divina Commedia' to hear!" "I know not in all the world," says Thomas Car- lyle, in his "Heroes and Hero Worship." "an af- fection equal to that of Dante. It is a tenderness, a trembling, longing, pitying love: like the wail of /Eolian harps, soft, soft; like a child's young heart; and then that stern, sore-saddened heart ! These longings of his toward his Beatrice; their meeting together in the Paradise; his gazing in her pure transfigured eyes, her that had been purified by death so long, separated from him so far: one likens it to the song of angels; it is among the put utterances of affection, perhaps the very pur that ever came out oi human soul." THE MARCH OF INTELLECT 155 It seems that for Beatrice Dante was hardly more than an acquaintance, and it is no mere flip- pancy to suppose that, had Dante fully known the real earth-born Beatrice, the divine Beatrice would have been lost to him and to us. His love for her stands for a way of loving. He carried enshrined in his heart from boyhood to manhood, and to old age, the holy face of a girl seen in the magic dawn of life with such an ecstasy of sight as to become for him a deathless angel of the imagination, a lifelong dream to keep pure the heart. This fashion of loving is not so common, nor is it so very rare. Lord Edward Bulwer Lytton, at the age of seventeen, found his boyish heart lit- terally bound to the object of his first innocent worship. "That sort of love/' says Lytton, in speaking of it in after life, "we felt for each other I cannot describe. It was so pure and yet so pas- sionate that never again have I felt, nor ever again can I feel, any emotion comparable to the intensity of its tumultuous tenderness. When I saw her at a distance my heart beat so wildly it cost a painful effort to breathe. But the moment I heard her voice I was calm. Comparing what I felt then with what I have felt since, I cannot say if it was real love. I am inclined to think it something in- finitely happier and less earthly. "The last time we met was at evening, a little before sunset. I had walked to London and bought a book she wanted to read. No one knew of our meetings; I had no confidant. When I gave her the book I said to her : 'You will never lend it to any one — never give it away?' She shook her head and smiled sadly ; after a little pause she said : 156 THE MARCH OF INTELLECT 'It will talk to me when you are gone.' The sun had set, and it was already dark. I turned to go and saw she was weeping. I covered her hands with my tears and kisses : we parted — forever !" It is supposed that the girl's father — she had no mother, no sister — had been advised of these in- terviews, and took her away, forcing her to marry another. For three years she dragged out a I erable existence, and death came to her relief. In her dying hour she wrote to Buhver, informing him of the suffering through which she had passed. and of her unconquerable devotion to him, intimat- ing a wish that he visit her grave, which he did, with a depth of grief in his heart that none but he could ever know. Dante's Beatrice married and lived but a short time, but she did not die for grief of him. Dante and Bulwer Lytton each also married, and neither was happy. To what extent the-. >ws and miseries are attributable to the disheartening power of disrupted affection will never be known. In an apostrophe to the idol of his young heart he "re- joiced" that custom had wrought no change in her to him and that "the halo of a dream was round her to the last." There are many ways of loving, many sha] of story taken by the fateful passion of lov< this difficult world. The great love stories fix either the type of love after the manner of one or another temperament, or the type of dramatic ex- pression imposed by circumstance. Sir Philip Sidney fell in love with Lady Pene- lope Devereux, but like so many on this plain' illy arranged for affairs o\ the heart, loved a THE MARCH OF INTELLECT 157 that did not return the flame. Mirror of chivalry and soul of honor as Sidney was, when at last we find him bidding his noble farewell to the love that was very life of his pure heart, the terms of his farewell do not indicate that he abandoned it from any sense of dishonor, but because — as some saint might abandon the world for the service of heaven, or some patriot might sacrifice his do- mestic ties to the service of his country — he had determined to go home to his own soul and follow the soaring spirit of his daring mind. Disappointed lovers usually marry, and Sidney was no excep- tion; but that is another story. The love of John Keats for Fanny Brawne was another case in point. A poet's love is apt to be subjective, and the woman he loves is often as much of his own creation as his verse. One may conceive of an ideal and ascribe its qualities to the one he fancies he loves, and, perchance, he may not awake — and be blest. The poet Petrach loved another man's wife all his life, simply because he did so before she mar- ried the other fellow, which drew from him his "Laura." Why cannot more sing jauntily like George Wither: "Be she fairer than the day, Or the flowery meads of May, If she be not so to me, What care I how fair she be?" "If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out." Love's execution is a painful scene: withal, the most tragic and saddest thing in the world; but it had better be killed off at once than for one to 158 THE MARCH OF INTELLE become the victim of its slow tortures. Common sense, manhood, and womanhood should rise above submitting to the soul-sickness of a disappointed love. Who but a man that had drunk of lost affection's lees could write the "Sorrows of Werter" ? Goethe felt what he penned. And would you look into Rousseau's life? — Read "Eloisa." It was Aloysia Weber, of Manheim, who first inspired a genuine passion in the heart of that prince of musicians — Mozart. She was a p: maiden of fifteen summers, a fine singer, of ro- mantic, even flighty mind. Circumstances separated them for a while; in the meantime, Aloysia had secured a position at a large salary in Munich, and was singing with much success. But when the faithful lover, from whom she had parted with vows of eternal constancy, appeared upon the scene, the beautiful, young prima donna, whose head had apparently been turned by the flatteries of the court, affected not to recognize him. Pride came to the support of the amazed and grief-stricken suitor. He seated himself at the piano and played a song, beginning: "I ptadly leave the irniden, Who does not care for ire." It was soon evident to Mozart that whatever a fleet ion Aloysia had felt for him was now ex- tinct; and, though he made a brave effort to bear his affliction, he wept much in secret. Musical eritics discern the | ate outpouring of youthful devotion in his arias composed especially THE MARCH OF INTELLECT 159 for her voice, his first being his best, written in the heyday of his dream. The other members of the Weber family treated Mozart kindly; and the younger sister, Constanze, a plain, little dark-eyed girl of fourteen, who seems to have been the Cinderella of the household, looked with romantic interest on the slender youth with the fiery eyes and the big nose, whom her faith- less sister had treated so shabbily. She did her best, in her girlish way, to comfort him; and was won by the ministrations of her who was destined to be the beloved companion of his future years, and in whose arms he was to end his life. Abraham Lincoln loved and was refused; he loved again and she died; yet he married. His great heart was mellowed for his future work by deep grief, by sorrow of the soul, that he might love the world and be loved by it. "I have loved as I never again shall love in this world; I have been loved as I never again shall be loved." Thus wrote Washington Irving, in Bracebridge Hall, and thereby penned a paragraph of his biography. It is full of melancholy mean- ing to those who know the great sorrow of its talented author's life. Washington Irving was engaged to be married to Matilda Hoffman, a gentle, engaging, and lovely girl. Before the wedding day his promised bride, and idol of his great young heart, was called by the trump of the death angel. "That's hallowed ground where, mourned and missed, The lips repose our love has kissed." It was a terrible blow to Irving, and the rest 160 THE MARCH OF INTELLECT of his life was that of a broken-hearted lover. She died in the beauty of her youth, and in his memory she ever remained the beautiful, tender, gracious girl — to whom he was true in life and true till death. How sad and sacred are these broken ties of the heart! And Robert Burns, the gifted Saxon Scot, did so love his "Highland Mary" that all the world was to know of her through him. And yet this lassie of the highlands was not his wife — and he had another. While at his birthplace Ingersoll wrote to Ridpath : "And as I stand within this hut I hold all thrones in scorn; For in this lowly, hallowed thatch Love's sweetest bard was born." A young man once "proposed" to a young lady and she declined, but said: "I shall never marry if you will not." The bargain was made, and he became the "Bachelor President" of the United States. John Ruskin, the "Sage of Brantwood," em- ployed an artist to paint the portrait of his beauti- ful and accomplished wife. While painting her portrait he won her heart — Ruskin took in the situation, and, philisopher as he was, made no un- seemly ado about it. but granted a divorce that she might marry the man she loved, and led her to the altar where her bridegroom waited. This was like Abraham offering Isaac as a sacrifice on the altar of devotion. He recognized and obeyed the in- voluntary law of l«NSJp <*££) <*£% QsSJpctf % SS©» <5&5Si&i> ^^ G 1 ?^ ^5^9 ^££ ^a«foo)SjJo o)2^o ^2ro $£<£ ^•o(oc>V(o5^V(o c V2?o o>oio °Jdtc /o °)9rfo gosb 8V>b 6o\3 B" &Sb « o^(T<^{y^(£^ffcftp &&& yo^o Gfe% 6" jg> By Alexandre Erixon. The Vale of Shadows 1.50 By Mrs. Josephine M. Clarke. The King Squirrel of Central Park (Juvenile) . .60 By William N. Freeman. St. Mammon a 1.50 By Mrs. I. Lowenberg. The Irresistible Current 1.50 By M. Y. T. H. Myth. Tales of Enchantment 1.00 A Tale Confided by the Woods 75 By Ida Blanche Wall. Comedy of Petty Conflicts 1.25 By Elizabeth Helene Freston. Poems (portrait) beautifully bound 1.00 Italia's Fornarina (leather) 3.00 Compiled by Darwin W. Esmond. 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