expense of wearing a form of headgear not approved by Dame Fashion. There is not a woman present who would dare run down a hill, in park or country, with a soul in sight to comment upon her childishness, and the woman who never wants to run down a hill is more profoundly a victim of "good form" than she dreams. Only yesterday a friend who takes cold easily and whose life is in danger with every fresh one, complained to me, "It's these hats!" Yet she would not dare wear one of those pretty worsted hoods that were the privilege of a past generation, though duration of life is the question at stake and that imminent! The most harmless, the most wholesome, the most essential freedom is denied us by the spirit of criticism that is abroad day and night.

The moral atmosphere we breathe not only forms our manners and makes us wear what we wear, but it builds up our characters into what they are, for better or for worse. While the spoiled child of fashion is getting by heart all the superficialities of his narrow world, the child of ignorance and poverty is feeding eye and ear upon the sights and sounds of back streets and uncultured homes, learning vulgarity and uncouthness with every breath he draws. What a heritage, the surroundings of either! Teachers who have had experience with children of both these classes say that these from the very haunts of vice have more in them that. responds to a humane culture's touch than the petted ones from the lap of wealth. The kindergarten creates an atmosphere that trains upward and outward and cultivates all that is heavenly in infant character. Dr. Rice in his "The Public School System of the United States," published by the Century Company, tells of the primary schools where this growth is continued and of others where it is killed.

The anti-fatalistic element in the philosophy of Evolution is the consideration that man makes his own moral atmosphere. He has only to become intelligent, then, to make the right sort of an atmosphere for every kind of innocent happiness and spiritual growth to thrive in. One of our very best American teachers never criticises his pupils. He inspires them! This is what the human family must learn to do, mem

ber for member. The greatest thing on earth is brotherly love. Universal love would make this earth a heaven, as Dr. Eccles so glowingly painted not long since. There is no need to search long for that "competent God" Mr. Skilton wants to find. The sweetest of history's voices has told us that God is Love. It is love that rules the universe, whether it manifests itself as gravitation, chemical affinity or human affection. Education must realize this and see to it that more love is poured into and out of the lives of succeeding generations. So shall be secured to some future race of human creatures the heaven that we have missed!

MR. JAMES A. SKILTON:

Apparently Dr. Janes expects me to talk on the subject of ventilation, a subject to which I have given much attention; but I have a matter to present that in a certain aspect has here and now even stronger claims on our attention than the question as to how we shall get fresh air to breathe. It has been said that the topics of our season's course are too strictly scientific in character and that it will be difficult if not impossible to show their ethical, sociological and religious implications. Upon this question I have some evidence to produce, discovered or rediscovered on a recent re-reading of some of the writings of Rus kin. Despising science he still shows that the seers, prophets, poets and critics of the ages have derived their insight, influence and importance from their discoveries and presentation of the ethical, sociological and religious implications to be found, not only in nature, but in the material elements and laws of nature. This being true, we may not only bring men of this type of mind to our aid in the work of this season, but we may hope to reach, instruct and help many among our hearers and readers who are not themselves accomplished in science; for the seer, prophet, etc., speak to and for all mankind, out of hearts and minds common in varying degree and measure to all men.

He refers to the beauty to be everywhere seen in plant and animal life, and with it evidences of health, happiness and the enjoyment of life. He says: "We

are to take it for granted that every creature of God is in some way good, and has a duty and specific operation providentially accessory to the well-being of all; we are to look in this faith to that employment and nature of each, and to derive pleasure from their entire perfection and fitness for the duty they have to do, and in their entire fulfillment of it."

But coming to the consideration of the human be ing, he draws a terrible but truthful picture of distortion, misery, unhappiness, and all downright ugliness, due to his seeming inability to fit himself into nature as do even plants and animals.

Later he calls attention to the powerful effects of nature upon the Hebrew mind-the influence of both the Egyptian lowlands, the mountains of Arabia, and the fruitful valleys of Palestine, producing as he terms it, "Sympathy with natural things themselves," which gives grandeur to the imagery of the Hebrew literature. Ruskin further asserts that education, until lately, has been directed in every possible way to the destruction of the love of nature; that children are deprived of opportunities of free and full converse with nature by a forced system of education, which turns away from nature to books, and that such of them as do secure for themselves the beneficent influence of the former, secure them under protest, even at the risk of being classed with the idle and selfwilled. Direct contact with nature is an incentive to truthfulness and right feeling-it is the source of right worship. With merely mechanical and artificial contrivances, however happily adjusted, we can construct no royal road to the attainment of the highest in character, art and life.

He further insists that the teachings of Christ himself, like those of the prophets and seers, derive their power and obtain their influence over us from and through nature, its implications and its sanctions.

If, then, these presentations of Mr. Ruskin are true, in dealing properly with the topic of the evening and with the other topics of this season, we are not only working in harmony with nature and with a true and broad science, but also with the seers, prophets, poets of the ages, and with all the true ethical and religious leaders and teachers of mankind.

DR. ECCLES in reply:

The awkward conclusion drawn by Miss Kenyon because of the present balanced condition of oxygen and carbon dioxide supply is hardly warranted from the facts. An increased supply of plants would make possible an increased supply of animals and vice versa. The large number of fires we now have, useless and useful, represent more consumption of oxygen than many times the number of human beings on the earth. The decomposition of organic matter by bacteria represents still more. All other animals not men, represent still more. When the number of human beings is great enough to take the places of all these oxygen consumers and carbonic acid makers, the population of the earth will be immensely greater than at present, and physical crowding will itself be likely to lead to decadence.

Noise, mosquitoes and dust may be reduced in future but science will not be apt to extinguish n ore than the mosquitoes in ages and not then until stagnant pools are at an end. Disease germs are likely to get the best of any effort at their extinction owing to their minuteness and ability to grow wherever moisture and heat are supplied. There are uses for all these plagues or they would not long remain active. Even the fashions at which we rail have their true uses. Without "good form" society would be likely to disintegrate. Out of place they are evils.