persons in our country, that is one in every twenty thousand of our population. From these without any exceptions our state governors, chief justices, United States senators and representatives, ambassadors, cabinet secretaries, vice-presidents and presidents would have to be chosen. This would give us two select classes of men and women: a class highest in social value, and a second one somewhat below; a higher and lower intellectual altruistic aristocracy, founded upon the superior qualities of our best individuals and accessible to all who can prove that they are of the requisite social value. Inasmuch as skilled labor is a commodity of universal need in our country, its constant and efficient supply must be guaranteed to the people as a whole. In a highly developed community the skilled laborers must be placed under government supervision, just the same as our teachers and physicians are at the present time. Each individual must be required to show a certain degree of skill and efficiency before he can receive a certificate giving him the right to practice. This would not be a socialistic scheme, any more than is our present school system. It would give labor its just position in the social group by allying it with all other forms of human effort and by placing it generally under more altruistic leadership, for, since labor heads would then function as government officials they would be subject to the special leadership requirements. Their supreme head, a cabinet secretary, would have to be chosen from the highest class, and their lesser leaders from the second class of our specially selected and educated men and women. It would be necessary also for us to establish a set of minimum requirements of intelligence, self-control and working efficiency for the right of citizenship for both men and women. This would include freedom from constant state supervision, the right to vote, eligibility for the minor governmental offices, and the right to marry and produce children. The minimum intelligence for such persons should be at the present time at least a mental age of twelve years and a somewhat equivalent moral rating which could be determined during their public school life. If this system could be established gradually, it would in time exclude from citizenship the lowest twenty-five per cent of our people who have very little if any true social value, and who transmit most of their undesirable qualities without perceptible improvement to about fifty per cent of our next generation. One source of our danger of destruction from within is here plainly evident. If we should establish a system somewhat as I have here outlined, then indeed, with our most trustworthy and intelligent people leading us in every line of work, and with our least intelligent not hampering us in our constructive work or race culture, we could begin to eliminate successfully many of the present evils of our civilization, especially graft and crime and vice and feeble-mindedness. Also, by giving proper physical and mental nurture to all of our better-born children we could increase widely the prevalence of many of the finer human qualities which are now comparatively rare and we could also assemble more of these higher qualities in the same individual, thus increasing our idealism for humanity both individualistic and general. To improve himself man must depend upon the work of his own intelligence and of his own hands, for any power whatsoever, whether human or divine, that labors for him is therein located. When religious training develops emotionalism in favor of correct thinking and of definite work in self improvement, then only does it function perceptibly for man's benefit. Many people have great faith in the power of their God to work wonders upon man, but no faith in man's power to do anything for himself. They assume that the wonder-working faith is the religious devotee's faith in his God. However, it is man's faith in himself, no matter how he comes to realize it or in what symbolism he disguises his conception of it. If his religion does not inspire him with faith in himself as a free working agent for the creation of better conditions of humanity, it fails of its true purpose. Man's faith in himself is the emotion that quickens into active life the primal urge of his nature which ever drives him onward to seek the fulfillment of his potentialities. Many religions have the arrogance to assume that earth's humanity is the sole interest and concern of the great controlling force of the whole universe. They teach that man need not strive hard to achieve perfection, for he is the favored child of the king of worlds, who will be to him a foolish and indulgent father, and will therefore promote him even if he is without merit, and will also bear the burden of his misconduct. This is a bigoted conception, and cannot be helpful to man's religious idealism. Why should our solar system be a unique exception, one out of many billions in a universe which is physically and chemically the same throughout? We have no reason for assuming that the scope of operations of the evolutionary force working for the production of life is any less extensive than that of the force of gravitation. Therefore we may suppose that there are numberless worlds around us capable of supporting life, and that there are intelligent beings throughout the universe working as we are for more adequate self-comprehension and for increased comprehension of their multiplex infinite environment. What is our rank in the scale of comparative intelligence? Some worlds may be a thousand or a million years behind us, others that much in advance. What will earth man be in a million years? It is vastly important that man should consider all this if he wishes to name himself the favored child of the universe. By accepting the whole cause of humanity as his dominating life purpose, individual man transcends his local and temporal individuality and becomes one, in his appreciations and interests, with all humanity. Thus the need of his higher human nature to work for some unlimited, imperishable cause that shall protect him against the tragedies accidental to human individualism, will be satisfied. If he is capable of this self-devotion to humanity, he can live happy and hopeful to the end of his life, helping to create a better humanity while he has the power to create; and when his active powers leave him, as he fades out of life, gazing with self-effacement upon his vision until it assumes reality,—the reality of the heavenly city of future humanity which he had labored so long and so faithfully to create. Thus he can regard his life as a glorious success, even though he die hopeless of any personal reward in the hereafter. This scheme of selecting our fittest and using them to govern us, which I here propose, may seem very strange and impracticable to many, and especially to those who, under the spell of their religious faith, are calmly waiting for the impossible to happen to man, that is, for man to be made ideally good by a power other than his own. The burden of self-evolution has been such a heavy one for man that in all of his religions he has developed theoretic methods of removing it entirely or shifting it mainly to another. Our modern scientific knowledge of the manner of man's growth has revealed the fallacy of all such theories. Social man can make progress increasingly in higher self-evolution only by first planning in detail the results he desires to obtain, and then by concentrating all of his available intellectual, moral and physical forces upon the achievement of these results. The evolution of self-responsibility in man is moral freedom. Man can do for his permanent good only that for which he can develop self-responsibility. On the upward way which leads to the ideal human social group he can advance only as far as he can walk alone. CHARLOTTE F. BABCOCK, BOSTON, MASS. STEVENSON A gallant craft with gleaming sails, Cool tang of salt on freshening gales, A springtime walk-a woodland way,- Warm noontide sun, and rest, when day Long pause at last on hill-top steep, HAZLITT A mountain-peak, clear-cut against the sky, A swinging stride along the winding road, Fragrance of autumn fires and smouldering leaves, The amber glow of golden harvest sheaves, And song that from the teeming heart o'erflowed. A tumbling brook amid the solitudes, Sun-bronzed but cool; deep, but pellucid clear, All the exultant music of the woods. A sudden cloud, dark shadows on the lea, A storm of hail, lashing the tree-tops highPassing as swift-to leave a cloudless sky, And rain-drenched, sparkling world of ectasy. |