The Prince George's enquirer and southern Maryland advertiser. (Upper Marlborough, Md.) 1882-1925, 1898-09-16

the individual than anything else
The greatest strength and the most
brilliant talents, if misdirected, shine
with but Il feeble lustre when CON-
pared with the sublimity of high
moral nature.
We hear much of athletics and the
higher education. Both are good, but
neither is the highest. The truly
higher education is not to be found in
any scholastic curriculum, but resides
Immediately in our home, and circle
of acquaintances, and more remotely
in our general environment. But
while physical and mental education
have their gymnasia, schools, and col
leges, in abundance, moral education
is left pretty much to shift for itself.
We put the cart before the horse,
and expect both to go on straight and
merrily! We subordinate the higher
to the lower, and are surprised if the
higher do not rule!
Let men say what they will, but no
one is a free agent. Each is first re-
stricted by the eternal laws of nature,
and next is modified by ever varying
circumstances. Environment fashions
Us whether we will or not; environ
ment controls our will, forms our SEN
timents, gives us our speecls our mo-
rality, and our religion, clothes and
edncates us, and shapes our destiny.
Prc-destination is not required for
these things; cnvironmene.is all-suffi-
cient.
This view, which is surely a correct
one, should go far to destroy many cr-
rors, one OF which is that all delin-
quency must be punished. We might
90 farther and question if any punisl-
ment is useful, and whether it does
not do more harm than good. What
our criminals and ne'er-do-wells of the
community want is not punishment
but pity; and that not the idiotic or
sentimental pity which pets and cod
dies them, and does more for them
than for honest people, but the pity
4, =, l,,ko <1,,:,,
or their destruction-reforma if it
can be attained, extinction if it cannot.
We expect all our citizens to be we'll
conducted and honest. But what sort
of an environment surrounds the great
er part of them? Is it conducive to
manliness in the men or modesty in
the women? Or is it too often q circle
of vice and debaucnery Our slums
reek with physical and moral filth, our
streets are at the mercy of drunken
and foul-mouthed ruffians and aban-
doncd women, who perambulate them
at pleasure and hustle virtue from the
pavement. Shall we fog them at the
carts tail as of old, or reform them? We
cannot resume obsolete punishments,
but how can they be reformed ? By a
change of environment by withdraw
ing them from their old haunts and
compelling them to earn an honest
living in specially arranged homes and
in a moral atmosphere. We have in
this country a vast number of notori
ously immoral persons, on the other
hand we have great many intelligent
and charitably disposed people with
nothing to do. Here are the two forces
which should come together, the vic
ious and tue reformative. Paid agents
would be useless for this remedial
work, for unless done from spirit of
pure charity it could never succeed.
But gentle men and women urged by
the divine impulses of the good monks
and nuns of old days, could wean back
many an evil and stubborn nature to
the paths of decency and rcctitude,
and do what prisons and paid chaplalns
could never accomplish. At present
things are going altogether wrong.
The social evil is increasing, SO are in
sanity and legal offences. Respect on
the part of the young for age, for good
ness. for the sex, and for their superb
ors, is decreasing, and threatens to dis
appear altogether. The Board Schools
turn their pupils ont with enough of
superficial knowledge to make them
conceited and saucy, but with the
minimum of moral training. We need
new environments, or rather a purify
ing Of the present ones, and these can
be gained only by general and systc-
matte effort on the part of all concern
ed, and by parental and patriotic de-
termination to eliminate or suppress,
at any cost, the rapidly increasing in
centives to evil.