introduction of gas. The first cargo of ice sent to New Orleans was driven away by the mob. It was imported something like seventy years ago, by Judah Touro, and being put into an ice-house in Congo Square, before it was completed, a mob rushed in, drove off the workmen, demolished the building, and ordered the captain to leave the port. The ice was sent to the West Indies, and the newspapers next day were fierce against the importation of ice.

The greatest follies and crimes are those which come in the name of religion. The liberal mind is familiar with the horrors and crimes which have been thus associated.

a sad, sad story, and we grow tired of it, but it has its ludicrous side also. Society, to-day, would be horrified at the idea of dining without forks. But forks have not long been in use, and when they were introduced in the fifteenth century, they made way slowly on account of the fierce religious opposition. Ministers preached against their use as sinful, since the Lord had made fingers to handle our food, and there was a great war of words before forks became established as allowable without sin.

Franklin's proposition in 1749 to use conductors as a protection against lightning was denounced as impious by Abbe Nollet and those who sympathized with him—as impious as for a child to ward off the chastising rod of the father. Such ideas are not yet obsolete. A Pennsylvania clergyman (whose name I have just forgotten, for the names of fools are innumerable) announced that the awful fire at Secretary Tracy's, and the death of his wife at Washington, was an outburst of God's wrath on account of the wickedness of our nation!

And now, kind reader, for I have held you by the button long enough for one interview-long enough to give you some idea of a certain style of thought-is it not rather a gloomy prospect for poor humanity, considering the vast multitude of fools in the only civilized portions of this globe, and the hopeless darkness of the rest? Perhaps so - but perhaps not. Your unseen friend is not a bit dismayed! He does not expect the morning sun to be free from fogs the sun of humanity is just rising; he does not expect a boy of ten to have the knowledge, wisdom, or self-control of a man. Humanity is hardly ten years old; it is not yet adolescent; it knows very little; it is hasty, passionate, igno

rant, gullible, and has not yet outgrown the nursery tales of its babyhood; it is not old enough to have any idea how it was born, how it came into existence, and its great Father has not yet informed it. But the time is coming, as sure as noon follows morning, when man shall realize his godlike nature, shall master all physical powers and processes, shall, therefore, live in comparative ease, shall perfect his own nature, cover the earth with peace, prosperity, and beauty, and make earth the ante-chamber of heaven. The ways and means exist, and our destiny is as fixed as the orbits of the planets. Hence to look at the dark side of existence is not disturbing or discouraging to one who sees the infinitely greater realm of brightness beyond.

OUR CIVILIZATION AND THE MARRIAGE

PROBLEM.

BY HIRAM M. STANLEY.

THE Civilization of to-day is unique. For the first time in history, scientific thought and mechanical invention have become ruling factors. In previous civilizations the scientific element has not existed at all, or in nothing more than an elementary stage; to-day it dominates all thought, and profoundly modifies literature, art, religion, philosophy, and morals. To the philosophical historian the present era is an intensely interesting period, as affording an opportunity for the observation of a new and powerful factor ruling human affairs. Not only is our civilization unique in its ruling factor, it is also unique in its extent. We are emerging from nationalism to a cosmopolitanism which embraces the globe. Ancient nationalism was merged in the limited cosmopolitanism of the Roman Empire; but the civilization of to-day is limited only by the earth itself. Every social question has thus more than a national significance; it embraces the world in its scope.

It is an induction of historical science that this largest of social entities, which we term a civilization, is an organism; it is born, it grows, culminates, declines, dies. This induction is as certain as the similiar one that all men die. We believe without questioning that all men are mortal, including ourselves, and the reason that the proposition, all civilizations are mortal, including our own, is not equally believed, is from a natural vanity, and also because of the largeness of the phenomenon. We smile at Virgil's firm belief in the immortality of Roman civilization, and the intelligent readers of one thousand years hence will smile at our mistaken beliefs. as to the perpetuity of our own institutions. While, however, the individual civilization dies, civilization still lives. The fact that an increasing heritage of culture is handed down to each succeeding civilization, preserves us from pessimism.

What is the mortal disease which brings civilization to inevitable death? All organisms die because the cells lose their assimilative and reproductive power. The cell is for the body what the individual is for society, and the body politic dies a natural death through the inability of the individual member to sustain himself and to worthily reproduce himself. We see civilization after civilization perishing thus ; a vigorous people grows into a civilized nation, wealth and art find place, corruption creeps in, the new generations fail in the work of progress because the renewal of individuals is left to the unfit, and the civilization dies. Sometimes, indeed, the civilization is regenerated by an infusion of barbaric blood, as in Roman life; but often it perishes forever, leaving no issue, as in the case of many American, African, and Asiatic states. Our civilization, however, cannot find regeneration by infusion of fresh blood because of its complete cosmopolitanism; renewal, if it comes at all, must come from within. Whether society contains inherent forces sufficient for its own renovation is a hard question upon which history throws little light; but it is a question which surely confronts us in these "last days." The dying Roman civilization was renewed by the internal stimulus of Christianity, combined with the external stimulus of fresh Northern blood, and there sprang into being our modern civilization. The Eastern Empire, possessing only the internal stimulus as its controlling force, became meagre and sterile, but in the West, by the forceful blending of both elements, there arose our modern nationalism. In any case we cannot expect a rude and vigorous people to resuscitate us, and it is quite unlikely that we shall receive immigrants from another sphere. We must work out our own salvation by scientific methods.

We judge, then, that the science of history makes certain to us that civilizations, like all else human, inevitably perish; and it points to the mortal disease as lack of reproductive power and inclination in the best individuals. Science cannot make the individual man nor the individual civilization immortal; but it can promote a normal healthy lease of life for each, and enable each to do powerfully and completely its work in the world. And what, in a word, from the scientific point of view, is the object of human society, and how is it to be attained?

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In dealing with these questions, science starts not from an ought," but from an "is." The factual determines the ethical. The tendency of deer is to become fleeter, and this, if it could be apprehended by them, is the "ought to be" for all deer. The end for any species of organisms is the perfection of the kind. The natural history of man shows him first as simply one species in the fauna of the country he inhabits, and differentiated from the surrounding animals by a slightly superior intelligence and social organization. This spiritual power is that which makes man human, and the end for humanity is humanization by the completest development of brain power. Scientific ethics thus reaffirms as the end of human society what has always been affirmed as such by both religious and philosophical ethics, that man was evolved for the subjugation of nature, in order thereby to give a free course for the fullest development of the highest spiritual elements; art, religion, science, philosophy, and morals. Now, the perfection of kind in any class of beings is for the most part secured by the co-operation of two factors, the sexual selection by which the fit are born, and by the natural selection of the struggle for existence by which the fittest survive. The working force of these two factors is greatly weakened in the case of man, so that society more and more suffers from the dead weight of hosts of individuals which in any other class of beings would never have been born, or at least never allowed to live. Here is the vital point of all social problems. The measures imperatively required for the alleviation of society, are not the alleviatory but the eliminatory. Ethical, educational, and religious organizations take the individual and endeavor to mould a nature; but nurture is infinitely weaker than nature, and all this enthusiasm about reformatory and educational measures has tended to obscure the real problem. As is so clearly pointed out by Prof. Lombroso in his recent work, Criminalite, the nature given by parentage and ancestry is by all means the chief element in society. Nurture can only develop what is given in nature. By selection man applies this law in raising the best kinds of plants and animals. In his own case, however, he blindly allows the bad to come in, and with most wearisome effort strives ceaselessly to make the bad good, to develop wheat from tares. It is safe to say that the majority of births in any year in our large cities, is not for the best interests of