hat he
mingles his thoughts with his labor--just in the proportion that he
takes advantage of the forces of nature; just in proportion as he loses
superstition and gains confidence in himself. Man advances as he
ceases to fear the gods and learns to love his fellow-men. It is all,
in my judgment, a question of intellectual development. Tell me the
religion of any man and I will tell you the degree he marks on the
intellectual thermometer of the world. It is a simple question of
brain. Those among us who are the nearest barbarism have a barbarian
religion. Those who are nearest civilization have the least
superstition. It is, I say, a simple question of brain, and I want, in
the first place, to lay the foundation to prove that assertion.

A little while ago I saw models of nearly everything that man has made.
I saw models of all the water craft, from the rude dug-out in which
floated a naked savage--one of our ancestors--a naked savage, with
teeth twice as long as his forehead was high, with a spoonful of brains
in the back of his orthodox head--I saw models of all the water craft
of the world, from that dug-out up to a man-of-war that carries a
hundred guns and miles of canvas; from that dug-out to the steamship
that turns its brave prow from the port of New York with a compass like
a conscience, crossing three thousand miles of billows without missing
a throb or beat of its mighty iron heart from shore to shore. And I
saw at the same time the paintings of the world, from the rude daub of
yellow mud to the landscapes that enrich palaces and adorn houses of
what were once called the common people. I saw also their sculpture,
from the rude god with four legs, a half dozen arms, several noses, and
two or three rows of ears, and one little, contemptible, brainless
head, up to the figures of today,--to the marbles that genius has clad
in such a personality that it seems almost impudent to touch them
without an introduction. I saw their books--books written upon the
skins of wild beasts--upon shoulder-blades of sheep--books written upon
leaves, upon bark, up to the splendid volumes that enrich the libraries
of our day. When I speak of libraries I think of the remark of Plato:
"A house that has a library in it has a soul."

I saw at the same time the offensive weapons that man has made, from a
club, such as was grasped by that same savage when he crawled from his
den in the ground and hunted a snake for his dinner;