leave it
at that. I will rely on the other nine thousand nine hundred for my
living."

The situation has so far changed between those days and our own that
there are now more intelligent and fewer credulous persons. Education,
therefore, should not be directed to credulity but to intelligence. He
who bases education on credulity builds upon sand.

I know of an incident which is perhaps reproduced in our society
thousands of times. Two girls of noble family had been educated in a
convent, where, to safeguard them from the seductions and vanities of
the life for which they were destined, the nuns had persuaded them
that the world is full of deceit, and that if, when people praise us,
we could conceal ourselves and listen to what they say when we have
disappeared, we should hear very chastening things. When they were of
an age to be presented in Society, the two youthful princesses made
their first appearance at an evening reception, to which their mother
had invited a great many guests. All lavished praises on the charming
young girls. In the drawing-room there was an alcove concealed by a
large curtain. Curious to hear what would be said of them when they
disappeared, the two agreed to slip out and hide behind the curtain.
Scarcely had the attractive objects of the general admiration vanished
when the praises which had been kept within due bounds in their
presence, were redoubled. The two girls told me that they experienced
an indescribable revulsion of feeling at the moment; they thought that
everything the nuns had made them believe was false; they renounced
religion there and then, and made up their minds to throw themselves
into the pleasures of society. "We afterwards had to reconstruct our
lives ourselves, embrace the truths of religion afresh, and understand
for ourselves the emptiness of social brilliance."

Credulity gradually disappears with experience, and as the mind
matures: _instruction_ helps towards this end. In nations as in
persons, the evolution of civilization and of souls tends to diminish
credulity; _knowledge_, as is commonly said, dispels the _darkness_ of
ignorance. In the void which is ignorance, the fancy easily wanders,
just because it lacks the support which would enable it to rise to a
higher level. Thus the Pillars of Hercules disappeared when the
Straits of Gibraltar became the gates of the oceans; and no Columbus
could now persuade the Red Indians, whom the great American spirit of
d