Future, the servants of
Humanity--both its philosophical and its practical servants--come
forward to claim as their due the general direction of the world.
Their object is to constitute at length a real Providence in all
departments--moral, intellectual and material.

--_Auguste Comte_

[Illustration: AUGUSTE COMTE]

A little city girl asked of her country cousin, when honey was the topic
up for discussion, "Does your papa keep a bee?"

Let the statement go unchallenged, that a single bee has neither the
disposition nor the ability to make honey.

Bees accomplish nothing save as they work together, and neither do men.

Great men come in groups.

Six men, three living at the village of Concord, Massachusetts, and
three at Cambridge, fifteen miles away, supplied America really all her
literature, until Indiana suddenly loomed large on the horizon, and
assumed the center of the stage, like the spirit of the Brocken.

Five men made up the Barbizon school of painting, which has influenced
the entire art education of the world. And that those who have been
influenced and helped most, deny their redeemer with an oath, is a
natural phenomenon psychologists look for and fully understand.

Greece had a group of seven thinkers, in the time of Pericles, who made
the name and fame of the city deathless.

Rome had a similar group in the time of Augustus; then the world went
to sleep, and although there were individuals, now and then, of great
talent, their lights went out in darkness, for it takes bulk to make a
conflagration.

Florence had her group of thinkers and doers when Michelangelo and
Leonardo lived only a few miles apart, but never met. Yet each man
spurred the other on to do and dare, until an impetus was reached that
sent the names of both down the centuries.

Boswell gives us a group of a dozen men who made each other
possible--often helped by hate and strengthened by scorn.

The Mutual Admiration Society does not live in piping times of peace,
where glowing good-will strews violets; often the sessions of this
interesting aggregation are stormy and acrimonious, but one thing
holds--the man who arises at this board must have something to say.
Strong men, matched by destiny, set each other a pace. Criticism is full
and free. The most interesting and the most successful social experiment
in America owed its lease of life largely to its sch