the whole moral nature is essentially
infected, and that goes deeper down, and is more dangerous, _qua_
heredity, than a particular derangement. A mental alienation is a
natural pathological evolution of it."

CHAPTER VII.

Knowledge.

What food is to the body, that knowledge is to the mind. It is the bread
of intellectual life. Without knowledge of agriculture and the mechanic
arts we should be unable to provide ourselves with food and clothing and
houses and ships and roads and bridges. Without knowledge of natural
science we should be strangers in the world in which we live, the
victims of the grossest superstitions. Without knowledge of history and
political science we could have no permanent tranquility and peace, but
should pass a precarious existence, exposed to war and violence, rapine
and revolution. Knowledge unlocks for us the mysteries of nature;
unfolds for us the treasured wisdom of the world's great men; interprets
to us the longings and aspirations of our hearts.

Books, we know,
Are a substantial world, both pure and good:
Round these with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,
Our pastime and our happiness will grow.

THE DUTY.

+The severity of truth.+--Things exist in precise and definite
relations. Events take place according to fixed and immutable laws.
Truth is the perception of things just as they are. Between truth and
falsehood there is no middle ground. Either a fact is so, or it is not.
"Truth," says Ruskin, "is the one virtue of which there are no degrees.
There are some faults slight in the sight of love, some errors slight in
the estimation of wisdom; but truth forgives no insult, and endures no
stain." Truth does not always lie upon the surface of things. It
requires hard, patient toil to dig down beneath the superficial crust of
appearance to the solid rock of fact on which truth rests. To discover
and declare truth as it is, and facts as they are, is the vocation of
the scholar. Not what he likes to think, not what other people will be
pleased to hear, not what will be popular or profitable; but what as the
result of careful investigation, painstaking inquiry, prolonged
reflection he has learned to be the fact;--this, nothing less and
nothing more, the scholar must proclaim. Truth is fidelity to fact; it
plants itself upon reality; and hence it speaks with authority. The
truthful man is one whom we can depend upon. His w