tellects or their illustrious deeds, but by heroic perseverance in self-control and self-devotion. Greater than this help even is the aid that we can all impart to one another by living sympathy and helpfulness. Sweetness and light, we can give a small portion of these to one another every day, making the burdens easier and the path plainer. Cogitavi vias meas: "I have considered my ways." When we consider them well we ask for guidance from the noble and the true of the past and the present. By dwelling on their example and on the ideal of the perfect man who unites all virtues and all excellences, we are inspired to become something better than we are; by patient continuance in well-doing we are slowly transformed into the image of our hope!

NOTES.

THE teacher of morals will do well to conclude every lesson by striking the note of character, distinguished from the note of external consequences as a test of conduct, and from the note of circumstances as a rule of action. "The character itself should be to the individual a paramount end, simply because the existence of this ideal nobleness of character, or of a near approach to it, in any abundance, would go further than all things else toward making human life happy, both in the comparatively humble sense of pleasure and freedom from pain, and in the higher meaning of rendering life not what it now is almost universally, puerile and insignificant, but such as human beings with highly developed faculties can care to have." -J. S. MILL, Logic, Bk. vi. Ch. 12.

"It always remains true that if we had been greater, circumstances would have been less strong against us." - GEORGE ELIOT in Middlemarch.

"A healthy soul stands united with the Just and the True, as the magnet arranges itself with the pole, so that he stands to all beholders like a transparent object betwixt them and the sun, and whoso journeys towards the sun journeys towards that per

son.

He is thus the medium of the highest influence to all who are not on the same level. Thus men of character are the conscience of the society to which they belong." (Emerson, "Character.") The Chinese have a proverb: "He who finds pleasure in vice and pain in virtue is still a novice in both."

"Even in a palace life may be led well!

So spoke the imperial sage, purest of men,
Marcus Aurelius.

The aids to noble life are all within."

M. ARNOLD.

The "literature of power," as distinguished from the "literature of knowledge," tends to shape character in manifold ways. A large part of the great literature of the world, judged by literary standards, has immense influence, directly and indirectly, in forming the conduct of men. Lectures, sermons, and volumes on character are innumerable: see, simply as specimens, four books, Emerson's Conduct of Life, Character Building, by E. P. Jackson, Character, by S. Smiles, and Corner-Stones of Character, by Kate Gannett Wells.

The importance to refinement of character of an early acquaintance with the best literature is well emphasized by Mary E. Burt in her Literary Landmarks and in the Atlantic Monthly for May, 1891; see also C. D. Warner's article in the same periodical for June, 1890, and “Literature in School,” by H. E. Scudder, in the Riverside Literature Series.

"He spoke, and words more soft than rain

Brought the Age of Gold again :

His action won such reverence sweet,

As hid all measure of the feat."

CHAPTER XIV.

MORAL PROGRESS.

THE first place where we learn about the moral laws is, of course, the home into which we are born. The family is the earliest and the latest school of morals. If we observe how children advance naturally in knowledge and practice of the right, we shall find the broad lines on which the moral progress of the world at large has taken place. For, as the philosophy of evolution teaches us, the development of entire humanity is figured and summarized in the growth of each child.

When the child has learned to obey father and mother, and when it will speak the truth to them constantly, it may still conduct itself unmorally or immorally toward persons outside the home bounds. Children not rarely tell an untruth to a mere acquaintance or a stranger without any sense of wrong-doing, while they would think it very wrong to tell a lie to father or mother or brother or sister. This will not be so strange to us when we reflect that they have not yet learned to know any larger world than the home, that their ideas. of right and wrong naturally take a very concrete form. and are concerned with a very few persons. Right is, for them, to "mind" father's and mother's commands, to do as they are told to do, and to tell their parents the truth. The general and abstract idea of obedience to the Moral Law applying to all mankind comes later and gradually with experience and enlarging power of thought.

All the mistakes and imperfections of the morals of children can be paralleled from the practice of savages

or barbarians now living, or from the records of early, historic mankind. The savage obeys his chief and complies very carefully with the customs of his tribe; he tells the truth, in a rough way, to his fellow-tribesmen, and in general, he deals with them according to his rude notions of justice. But he has no notion that men of another tribe have any rights that he is bound to respect. He can deceive, cheat, maltreat, or kill them, in peace or in war, and his conscience will never trouble him. He has a tribal conscience, just as the child has a home conscience. So in later times, and down even to our own day, persons of one nation or race hate those of another or of all others, and consider themselves practically free from this or that obligation of truth or justice toward them. Such are the actual relations, too often, of the white man and the man with a black or a yellow skin; of the Englishman and the Irishman; of the French and the Germans. But as respects the extent to which the moral law applies, it is very plain that we do not reach a logical limit until we have included the whole human race. Morality is conterminous, i. e., has the same bounds and limits, with humanity, with all mankind. There are special duties and great differences in the degree of obligation according as we live in closer or looser relations with other human beings, from the nearness, constancy, and immediateness of home life up to our most general relations to the great mass of men whom we never even see. But whosoever the man may be, American, Negro, or Chinaman, with whom we have dealings at any time or in any place, the universal moral law dictates that he shall be treated justly. Nihil humani alienum a me puto, says a character in a play of the Roman writer, Terence, "I esteem nothing human foreign to me." So morality might speak if we were to personify it. Every relation of man to men, without regard to country or complexion or race or age, is sub

ject to moral judgment. Ethics is a science of a part of universal human nature: and morality is an art to be practised by us toward every other human being.

Progress in general morals is going on, and must go on, until all mankind recognize that they live under one great moral law. This progress is marked by the discussion and agitation of the rights of this or that class of human beings that is constantly going on. What are the rights of women? What are the rights of children? What are the rights of the Negro or of the Chinaman in this country? This word "rights" very often means "political privileges," such as the right to vote, with which we are not concerned in this elementary book. But the moral rights of women and children, of negroes and Chinamen, for example, are much more important to them than these political privileges. Moral progress consists, in one aspect, in the increasing recognition, theoretically and practically, of the fact that there is the same measure of right and duty for every human being.

Each person has a right to himself, to his own person: so slavery, the ownership of one man by another, as if he were a piece of property like a dog or a horse, is wrong, whether the slave be white or black in color. Women have peculiar duties as wives and mothers; but as human beings in a civilized state they have the same general rights as men to education and property and labor. Children are morally bound to obey their parents and other superiors in authority; but parents are bound, as well, to respect the nature of the child and to give him an education to fit him for mature life. So there are the rights of workmen and servants, as well as their duties, which are to be borne in mind by masters and employers. As a rule, it is a bad sign for any person, man or woman, to be talking very much about rights; commonly, he would have fully enough to do in attending to his duties. We can never be