pot from which you can see it
as a whole. This is symbolic of everything great or beautiful in the
world. It ought to exist for its own sake alone, but before very long
it is misused to serve alien ends. People come from all directions
wanting to find in it support and maintenance for themselves; they
stand in the way and spoil its effect. To be sure, there is nothing
surprising in this, for in a world of need and imperfection everything
is seized upon which can be used to satisfy want. Nothing is exempt
from this service, no, not even those very things which arise only
when need and want are for a moment lost sight of--the beautiful and
the true, sought for their own sakes.

This is especially illustrated and corroborated in the case of
institutions--whether great or small, wealthy or poor, founded, no
matter in what century or in what land, to maintain and advance human
knowledge, and generally to afford help to those intellectual efforts
which ennoble the race. Wherever these institutions may be, it is not
long before people sneak up to them under the pretence of wishing to
further those special ends, while they are really led on by the desire
to secure the emoluments which have been left for their furtherance,
and thus to satisfy certain coarse and brutal instincts of their own.
Thus it is that we come to have so many charlatans in every branch
of knowledge. The charlatan takes very different shapes according
to circumstances; but at bottom he is a man who cares nothing about
knowledge for its own sake, and only strives to gain the semblance
of it that he may use it for his own personal ends, which are always
selfish and material.

* * * * *

Every hero is a Samson. The strong man succumbs to the intrigues of
the weak and the many; and if in the end he loses all patience he
crushes both them and himself. Or he is like Gulliver at Lilliput,
overwhelmed by an enormous number of little men.

* * * * *

A mother gave her children Aesop's fables to read, in the hope of
educating and improving their minds; but they very soon brought the
book back, and the eldest, wise beyond his years, delivered himself as
follows: _This is no book for us; it's much too childish and stupid.
You can't make us believe that foxes and wolves and ravens are able to
talk; we've got beyond stories of that kind_!

In these young hopefuls you have the enlightened Rationalists of