Year: 1875

This age, like every other, has its pecu
liar advantages, to be set against the unde-
niable losses which have occurred to man
kind from the decay of authority and
reverence for law; from the absorption and
one-sidedness of busy and material epoch
from the disturbance which physical science
has given to traditional beliefs; and from
the general spirit of questioning, which for
the moment involves truth as well as error
in suspicion, and weakens the fastenings of
morals.


The gains which marx our era are so
large and decided, as to leave the balance
greatly in favor of our own time as COM
pared with any previous period. As the
latest born, we are the heirs of the latest
and longest experience. If there be any
progress in the growth of common wis
dom; if the varied experiments of success
sive civilization are of any worth; if all
past history, literature and poetry have
not been thrown away-then, as the heirs
of all preceding times and epochs, we have
the vast capital and the accumulated wealth
of knowledge and practice which the past
has garnered.


The spirit of the age, like its politics, has
broadened into true democracy. 1t is fav-
orable, as never before, to free and univer
sal inquiry. In every time students and
philosophers have sought to fathom the
laws of nature and of mind, but it was re-
served to our generation to popularize this
knowledge and turn the contributions of
few into the common enrichment of all.
When branch of knowledge has been cul-
tivated for ages and still remains inaccessi-
BILE to the world at large, it shows that
something radically deeper, richer and more
beautiful must supervene. This law is IL
lustrated by many things. All books were
once perpetuated by copying with the hand :;
whoever would possess volume must pay
for the tedious toll of transcribing it. The
utmost rapidity and cheapness in this mode
of multiplying books could not bring them
within reach of the public. How was the
difficulty to be met? By some meaner pro-
cess, which should at once cheaper books
and deteriolate their beauty and value to
the same degree? Far from it. The means
of making the poor man reader and owner
Of books lay in a glorious new art that
clothed all literature in a bodily frame of
surprising beauty, and placed it in the
hands of the people in form that the great
est kings would have coveted; and which
even Homer or Cicero would have welcomed
as the material pedestal of their Immortality.
This art, so simple and universal, was not
lower, but immeasurably higher, than its
predecessor, whose services were for the
narrow circle of the learned.


Up to recent date coaches and high
roads furnished nearly the only modes of
locomotion. The more these modes were
perfected, the more expensive and select
they became, and journeys were restricted
to small portion of the community. To
popularize travelling, make it democratic,
and turn all men into travellers, an inven-
ton grander and cheaper than had then
traversed space was required. To move
the rich was needed only four-horse
coach, running six miles an hour; but to
move the masses railways were required,
compared with which the Appian and other
ways of the journeying Caesars were value
less. So it must be with all human knowl-
enge. A petty magnet is sufficient to take
up small class of isolated persons; but
when the people are to be attracted, there
=, khar hn aorfh hot
draw their feet. 1t is not too much to say
that more has been done in fifty years than
in ali past ages to enrich human life with
knowledge and dis ,overy, inuring directly
to the pleasure and profit of the masses OF
mankind.


There is such thing as evolution. The
turnpike evolves the railroad, the twelve
passenger car the eighty passenger car, the
home spinning wheel the thousand spindle
factory, the school house singing class the
oratorio and Boston jubilee. The spirit oi
change and of advancement and elevation
is literally in the air. The destruction oi
the old is merely the evolution of the new,
and wise men, instead of experiencing de
spair and alarm, viii adjust themselves tC
new conditions until scientific feudalisn
shall have passed away, and all knowledg'
belongs directly to the broad industry o
mankind. We have seen this process goins
on in the history of civilization and of re
ligion, and are about to witness the sam


thing in the progress of science and o
| thouoht