The love of knowledge still fed on the literary treasures of antiquity; the flame of philosophy was now and then rekindled at the still glowing embers of pagan civilization; but the doctrine of other-worldliness denounced the pursuit of worldly lore, and science degenerated into a medley of nursery-legends and monkish fever-dreams. Men walked through life as Sindbad walked through the perils of the spirit-vale, in constant dread of spectral manifestations, in constant anticipation of ghostly interference with their earthly concerns, the pursuit of which all but the wisest undertook only in a desultory, tentative way, haunted by the idea that success in worldly enterprises could be bought only at the expense of the immortal soul. And how many thousand wanderers of our latter-day world have thus been diverted from the path of manful perseverance, and almost directly encouraged in the habit of palliating inconstancy of purpose with that “dissatisfaction and weariness of worldly vanities,” which the ethics of their spiritual educators commend as a symptom of regeneration! The voices of re-awakened Nature protest, but only with intermittent success, and the penalty of vacillation is that discord of modern life that will not cease till our system of ethics has been thoroughly purged from the poison of Antinaturalism. E.—REFORM. That work of redemption should include an emphatic repudiation of the natural depravity dogma. Our children should be taught that steadfast loyalty to the counsels of their natural reason is sufficient to insure the promotion of their welfare in the only world thus far revealed to our knowledge. The traditional concomitance of perseverance and mediocrity should be refuted by the explanation of its cause. For a long series of centuries the predominance of insane dogmas had actually made science a mere mockery, and application to the prescribed curriculum of the monastic colleges a clear waste of time—clear to all but the dullest minds. The neglect of such studies, of the disgusting sophistry of the patristic and scholastic era, was, indeed, a proof of common sense, since only dunces and hypocrites could muster the patience required to wade through the dismal swamp of cant, pedantry, and superstition which for thirteen centuries formed the mental pabulum of the priest-ridden academics. During that era of pseudo-science and pseudo-morality, of fulsome rant centered on a monstrous delusion, the eccentricity of genius was more than pardonable, being, in fact, the only alternative of mental prostitution. The ideas of waywardness and mental superiority became thus associated in a way which in its results has wrought almost as much mischief as in its cause. The delusions of that idea have wrecked as many promising talents as indolence and intemperance.