millionaire himself, even if his million could be piled up in no other
way than by sweating thousands of his fellows. The usurpation of
government by the ignorant will bring disaster, but how in these days
could a wise man reign any longer than ignorance permitted him? The
everlasting veerings of the majority, without any reason meanwhile for
the change, show that, except on rare occasions of excitement, the
opinion of the voters is of no significance. But when we are asked what
substitute for elections can be proposed, none can be found. So with
the relationship between man and woman, the marriage laws and divorce.
The calculus has not been invented which can deal with such
complexities. We are in the same position as that in which Leverrier
and Adams would have been, if, observing the irregularities of Uranus,
which led to the discovery of Neptune, they had known nothing but the
first six books of Euclid and a little algebra.

There has never been any reformation as yet without dogma and
supernaturalism. Ordinary people acknowledge no real reasons for virtue
except heaven and hell-fire. When heaven and hell-fire cease to
persuade, custom for a while is partly efficacious, but its strength
soon decays. Some good men, knowing the uselessness of rational means
to convert or to sustain their fellows, have clung to dogma with
hysterical energy, but without any genuine faith in it. They have
failed, for dogma cannot be successful unless it be the INEVITABLE
expression of the inward conviction.

The voices now are so many and so contradictory that it is impossible to
hear any one of them distinctly, no matter what its claim on our
attention may be. The newspaper, the circulating library, the free
library, and the magazine are doing their best to prevent unity of
direction and the din and confusion of tongues beget a doubt whether