rly homogeneous human
family, and one which is recognisable by certain features due to a
community of life and customs.

"This idea that they belong to the best race in the world, and that
they are its finest family, inspires them with noble pride, indomitable
courage, and a hatred for the human race.

"The life of a people is but a succession of miseries, crimes, and
follies. This is true of the Penguin nation, as of all other nations.
Save for this exception its history is admirable from beginning to end."

The two classic ages of the Penguins are too well-known for me to lay
stress upon them. But what has not been sufficiently noticed is the way
in which the rationalist theologians such as Canon Princeteau called
into existence the unbelievers of the succeeding age. The former
employed their reason to destroy what did not seem to them, essential
to their religion; they only left untouched the most rigid article of
faith. Their intellectual successors, being taught by them how to
make use of science and reason, employed them against whatever beliefs
remained. Thus rational theology engendered natural philosophy.

That is why (if I may turn from the Penguins of former days to the
Sovereign Pontiff, who, to-day governs the universal Church) we cannot
admire too greatly the wisdom of Pope Pius X. in condemning the study
of exegesis as contrary to revealed truth, fatal to sound theological
doctrine, and deadly to the faith. Those clerics who maintain the rights
of science in opposition to him are pernicious doctors and pestilent
teachers, and the faithful who approve of them are lacking in either
mental or moral ballast.

At the end of the age of philosophers, the ancient kingdom of Penguinia
was utterly destroyed, the king put to death, the privileges of the
nobles abolished, and a Republic proclaimed in the midst of public
misfortunes and while a terrible war was raging. The assembly which
then governed Penguinia ordered all the metal articles contained in the
churches to be melted down. The patriots even desecrated the tombs of
the kings. It is said that when the tomb of Draco the Great was opened,
that king presented an appearance as black as ebony and so majestic
that those who profaned his corpse fled in terror. According to other
accounts, these churlish men insulted him by putting a pipe in his mouth
and derisively offering him a glass of wine.

On the seventeenth day of the month of Mayflowers, the shrine o