almost fatal augury?"

His companion laughed--a gentle, careless laugh of amused disdain.

"Phenomenon! ... augury! ..." he exclaimed shrugging his
shoulders lightly ... "These words, my young friend, are terms
that nowadays belong exclusively to the vocabulary of the
uneducated masses; we,--and by WE, I mean scientists, and men of
the highest culture,--have long ago rejected them as unmeaning and
therefore unnecessary. Phenomenon is a particularly vile
expression, serving merely to designate anything wonderful and
uncommon,--whereas to the scientific eye, there is nothing left in
the world that ought to excite so vulgar and barbarous an emotion
as wonder, . . nothing so apparently rare that cannot be reduced at
once from the ignorant exaggerations of enthusiasm to the sensible
level of the commonplace? The so-called 'marvels' of nature have,
thanks to the advancement of practical education, entirely ceased
to affect by either surprise or admiration the carefully matured,
mathematically adjusted, and technically balanced brain of the
finished student or professor of Organic Evolution,--and as for
the idea of 'auguries' or portents, nothing could well be more
entirely at variance with our present system of progressive
learning, whereby Human Reason is trained and taught to pulverize
into indistinguishable atoms all supernatural propositions, and to
gradually eradicate from the mind the absurd notion of a Deity or
deities, whom it is necessary to propitiate in order to live well.
Much time is of course required to elevate the multitude above all
desire for a Religion,--but the seed has been sown, and the
harvest will be reaped, and a glorious Era is fast approaching,
when the free-thinking, free-speaking people of all nations shall