the roads and the best x pro way i can serve him is by drawing his attention to the which till now he has accepted as a that there is one standard of conduct for all men and all women but the difficulty of writing a sufficient letter on a subject so large and so intricate me and i sat smiling for an odd thought had dropped suddenly into my mind my correspondent was a bible reader no doubt and it would be amusing to refer him to the chapter in where god is angry with our first parents because they had eaten of the tree of good and evil this passage i said to myself has never been properly understood why was god angry for no other reason except that they had set up a moral standard and could be happy no longer even in paradise according to this chapter the moral standard is the origin of all our woe god himself summoned our first parents before him and in what plight did they appear we know how ridiculous the fig leaf makes a statue seem in our think of the poor man and woman attired in fig leaves just plucked from the trees i experienced a thrill of satisfaction that i should have been the first to understand a text that men have been studying for of years turning each word over and over worrying over it all in vain yet through no fault of the who certainly his intention could he have done it better than by exhibiting our first parents covering themselves with fig leaves and telling how after getting a severe talking to from the almighty they escaped from paradise pursued by an angel the story can have no other meaning and that i am the first to it is due to no superiority of intelligence but because my mind is free but i must not appear to my correspondent as an turning to his letter again i read xi m� of my dead life i mm is your life all of a ave a i can t the yon seem and frank to the ve of or over bat is standard of is there a � id a is open to any man can yon refer me now to any other book of yours in yon view life steadily and it whole from our point my intrusion see i don t set n self aa a but you � y all my standards and you take your reader so quietly aad closely into your confidence tiiat you tempt a response i see your many points but your of is not and i do want to as a matter of enormous human what are i cannot ov express myself with literary point as you do hot may see what i aim at it is a bigger question to me than value or force of your book it goes right to the core of the big things and i you as one man of limited outlook to another of wider range the reader will not suspect me of vanity for in these he will see readily that my is to let the young man paint his own portrait and i hope he will catch as i seem to do of an earnest spirit a sort of father hesitating on the brink of his lake there is a lake in every man s but i most not quote my own writings if i him the reader will be able to judge having the letter before him but if my view of him is right my task is a more subtle one than merely to point out he seek in vain for a moral standard whether he seeks it in the book of nature or in she book of god i should not move him by pointing out that in the old t � we xii pro told an eye for � i eye is onr and in tiie new the is to turn tiie left cheek after a blow cm the tight nor he be by referring him to ae history oi mankind to the wait for or tiie daily in everybody knows more or less the history of mankind and to know it at all is to know that every has at some time or been a but man by and to my correspondent over to onr side it might be to tell him that if there be no moral he will find a idea if he looks for it in i reflected how i would tell him that he most not be the idea and to and ns for long intervals if he would make progress he learn to that the world only we onr standards of what is right and wrongs just as the became a thousand times and beautiful when tiiat tiie earth moved had before the he would have been a great but he would not have w r i the celebrated passage two things fill tlie soul and ever admiration ihe ni t with its heaven of stars above us and in onr hearts the moral the only fault i find with passage is i read the word law where i to read the word idea for the word law seems to imply a standard and knew there is none is the fault with the or with who did not pick words the spent ten years thinking out the of pure reason and only six writing it no doubt his text t be with advantage if there was n moral xiii of my dead life standard the world within us would be as insignificant as die was when the earth was the of the universe and all the stars were little candles and sat above them a god who changed his mind and repented a fanciful god who ordered the waters to rise so that his creatures might be overwhelmed in 