m an impersonal point of view. Let him duly
realize the fact, that opinion is the agency through which character
adapts external arrangements to itself,--that his opinion rightly forms
part of this agency,--is a unit of force, constituting, with other such
units, the general power which works out social changes,--and he will
perceive that he may properly give full utterance to his innermost
conviction, leaving it to produce what effect it may. It is not for
nothing that he has in him these sympathies with some principles and
repugnance to others. He, with all his capacities and aspirations and
beliefs, is not an accident, but a product of the time. He must remember
that, while he is a descendant of the past, he is a parent of the
future; and that his thoughts are as children born to him, which he may
not carelessly let die. He, like every other man, may properly consider
himself as one of the myriad agencies through whom works the Unknown
Cause; and when the Unknown Cause produces in him a certain belief, he
is thereby authorized to profess and act out that belief. For, to render
in their highest sense the words of the poet,

'Nature is made better by no mean,
But nature makes that mean: over that art
Which you say adds to nature, is an art
That nature makes.'

"Not as adventitious, therefore, will the wise man regard the faith
which is in him. The highest truth he sees he will fearlessly utter;
knowing that, let what may come of it, he is thus playing his right part
in the world,--knowing that, if he can effect the change he aims at,
well: if not, well also, though not _so_ well."

VARIOUS ASPECTS OF THE WOMAN QUESTION.

_Diogenes._ Eve did not enter into the original plan; she was an unlucky
afterthought. Listen to Milton:--

"O, why did God,
Creator wise, that peopled highest heaven
With spirits masculine...?"

You observe that there are no feminine angels in heaven?

_Aristippus._ So much the better for us, if we have them all here.

_Diogenes._ For the same reason, probably, we are told that there will
be neither marrying nor giving in marriage hereafter.

_Aristippus._ Not at all. There will be so many more women in heaven
than men, that any marriage, except of the Mormon kind, would be
impossible.

_Diogenes._

"O, why did God
... create at last
This novelty on earth, this fair defect
Of na