t to his Creator, and hostile and hateful to him from his
birth, may give way to the belief that he is the latest terrestrial
manifestation of an ever upward-striving movement of divine power? If
there lives a man who does not want to disbelieve the popular notions
about the condition and destiny of the bulk of his race, I should like to
have him look me in the face and tell me so.

I am not writing for the basement story or the nursery, and I do not
pretend to be, but I say nothing in these pages which would not be said
without fear of offence in any intelligent circle, such as clergymen of
the higher castes are in the habit of frequenting. There are teachers in
type for our grandmothers and our grandchildren who vaccinate the two
childhoods with wholesome doctrine, transmitted harmlessly from one
infant to another. But we three men at our table have taken the disease
of thinking in the natural way. It is an epidemic in these times, and
those who are afraid of it must shut themselves up close or they will
catch it.

I hope none of us are wanting in reverence. One at least of us is a
regular church-goer, and believes a man may be devout and yet very free
in the expression of his opinions on the gravest subjects. There may be
some good people who think that our young friend who puts his thoughts in
verse is going sounding over perilous depths, and are frightened every
time he throws the lead. There is nothing to be frightened at. This is
a manly world we live in. Our reverence is good for nothing if it does
not begin with self-respect. Occidental manhood springs from that as its
basis; Oriental manhood finds the greatest satisfaction in
self-abasement. There is no use in trying to graft the tropical palm
upon the Northern pine. The same divine forces underlie the growth of
both, but leaf and flower and fruit must follow the law of race, of soil,
of climate. Whether the questions which assail my young friend have
risen in my reader's mind or not, he knows perfectly well that nobody can
keep such questions from springing up in every young mind of any force or
honesty. As for the excellent little wretches who grow up in what they
are taught, with never a scruple or a query, Protestant or Catholic, Jew
or Mormon, Mahometan or Buddhist, they signify nothing in the
intellectual life of the race. If the world had been wholly peopled with
such half-vitalized mental negatives, there never would have been a creed
like