It is impossible to live to a moderate age without forming some idea of the conduct of life; this may be practical or theoretical, or both. But either with or without consciousness we construct some plan of life and its purpose, and our daily conduct conforms more or less closely to the theory that we accept. The religionist teaches that the hope of future rewards and punishments must be kept before the mind, or man would give himself completely to indulgence, and the race would die. This theory loses sight of the fact that Nature herself is constantly wiping out those who defy her laws, and preserving longest those who conform to the conditions she has imposed. Excesses of all kinds destroy and weaken existence, and bring the natural penalty, which leaves only the more rational and temperate to perpetuate life upon the earth. Of course these observations apply, not to the fashions and forms and conventions of man, except so far as these conform to the unbending laws of nature, which must ever be supreme. From Omar Khayyam’s views of life, he could not but think that it was the duty of every pilgrim to get the most he could in his journey through the world. But, really, all accept this obvious fact. The Religionist says merely that man should be less happy here,—that his enjoyment may be the greater in the world to come. It is not in the theory as to life’s purpose that men have differed, but as to the conduct that really brings the greatest happiness when the last balance has been struck, and the book is forever closed. Our poet could not see the days and years go by and life’s sands swiftly running out, and still postpone all enjoyment to some far off, misty time. He believed in the reality of to-day, and that beyond the present all was but a vision and a dream. In his day, as in ours, the priests held out the hope of heaven and fear of hell, to keep the wanderer in the narrow path. But Omar was a philosopher and astronomer. He peered into the infinite depths of endless space, and could see only moving, whirling worlds like ours, and could find no place for heaven or hell. What the mysteries of astronomy could not reveal, the theories of life left equally in the dark. While he refused to be moved by a literal heaven and hell, he yet felt a deep meaning attached to these old religious views. The humane, progressive thinkers of to-day have scarcely gone beyond this old seer, who lived eight centuries ago and pondered the same problems over which our theologians wrangle now. The following stanza gives an interpretation of these religious dogmas, which for beauty and breadth and insight seems to be the latest product of ethical, religious thought, instead of the musty musings of an old pagan, who has been dust almost eight hundred years: