I hope and pray that reverence for science and freedom may ever increase in Italy. It will be an evil day for her if such reverence be lost, and she will become with every other people in like case a wretched spectacle, and will fall into such abject misery as to become the laughing-stock of every civilized nation. It will be understood that I do not erect science and liberty into fetishes to be generally adored: they are only sacred means to a more sacred end, namely, to enable men to practise and not merely to apprehend the truth, which in other words is goodness. Science and freedom are valuable only so far as they teach, persuade, and enable us to improve ourselves and others; to exercise every private and public virtue; to claim only what is due to ourselves, while making the needful sacrifice to the common good; to have a respect for humanity, and to venerate knowledge only so far as it is combined with virtue; to attempt in every way to alleviate the miseries of others, to deliver their minds from ignorance and error; to do right for its own sake without coveting rewards in heaven or on earth; to submit to no dictation but that of truth and goodness. With these sacred objects in view, whatever may be said to the contrary, we shall, in addition to the ineffable fruition of truth for its own sake, ever draw nearer to the ideal of the human race, and the time will come when an apparent Utopia shall be actually realized, in accordance with the mode and process of growing civilization. Not by excesses, tumults, and folly, but by unshaken firmness and tenacity we shall promote science and freedom. If this modest essay has done anything to show the necessity of such culture, and in what way science and freedom, and these two factors only, have brought forth fruit throughout the history of the human race, my labour will be richly rewarded, and I may say with satisfaction--_dies non perdidi!_ FOOTNOTES. [1] Simrock wrote: "Myth is the earliest form in which the mind of heathen peoples recognized the universe and things divine." [2] _Kumarila_, in reply to the opponents who inveighed against the immorality of his gods, wrote that the fable relates how Prajapati, the lord of creation, violated his own daughter. But what does this signify? Prajapati is one name for the sun, so called because he is the lord of light. His daughter Ushas is the dawn, and in declaring that he fell in love with her, it is only meant that when the sun rises, it follows the dawn. So also, when it is said that Indra seduced Ahalya, we are not to suppose that God committed such a crime, but Indra is the sun, and Ahalya is the night; and so we may say that the night is seduced and conquered by the morning sun. This, and other instances may be found in Max Mueller's _History of Ancient Sanscrit Literature_. Other instances might be given.