UNIVERSITY COURIER.
9
study of its laws if this be not so. Enlightened selfishness! yes the world is tending fast enough in that direction and needs no skillful teachers. Material wealth—prosperity, as the world terms it, is already worshipped in a majority of American households. But when we conscientiously answer the question, what denotes the prosperity of a country, we would not say, its material advancement. Intelligence and manly virtue constitute the source as well as the wealth of nations—the same forces which sustain and develop them.
The world has tried the pure economic system for centuries and men are debased, dissatisfied and wretched still. Is it not time for a change? It often seems to me that we do not need economists so much as we do philosophers—men who can comprehend other needs of man than those of mere material enjoyment. A philosopher would teach men that no sound system of economics could be established that was not founded on truth, and would lead them to see how much the success of the one depended upon a just comprehension of the scope of the other.
Much has been said in praise of our system of education and it deserves much, but it is not above criticism. It fails, in that it is largely sought and sustained from an economic standpoint. The old poet sung :
And what's the use of anything But so much money as t'will bring
and thus we say, we will educate ourselves because it pays, not because it will make us nobler or better; and we justify higher education by the state on the same grounds. It was Burke, I believe, who said "the education of the masses is the best defense of nations" but the time has come to base our reasoning on higher grounds. Right feeling as well as right thinking should be our aim in all efforts toward education. Any other is a false though perhaps a specious ethory.
Upon our moral greatness depends our material power and upon that only. "When political science concerns itself with man only and the action of the mind, when its aim becomes not simply material enjoyment but moral elevation," then this field will be far richer in results. Generations will pass away before the laws of economics are properly adjusted but it will all come at last, if we ever reach a perfect civilization, and every advance will be along the line of ethics.
This desire to be something instead of to have something will only come as the basis of our life and intelligence is broadened by true culture-by that culture which without annihilating the individual rises above him and considers what is best for all men. This is the force which is yet to enter the world, stronger than religion as we understand it, and which will rise above sects, and governments, and selfishness and point the way to a perfect life.
"All will come right if we only keep on hoping" says one, but I believe it will only come right if we keep on working, doing. "Go forward, do earnestly with the best light you have" says Arnold, and this seems the wisest counsel.
To the American people, with their peculiar genious for business and their love for speculation and moneygetting, these may seem mere youthful fancies and unworthy of serious attention, but I firmly believe they will yet enter into our lives and become the controlling principles to guide us in our intercourse with one another. In our quieter moments—our moments of thought and leisure, when away from the din and clamour of the active world, we all believe it. It is even now a part of us and the time is coming when we will take it with us into the malarial fog of business life and activity.
There is something entirely too unsatisfactory about this life to think it is always to remain as it is, and the fact that something better is possible confirms the belief that it yet will come. There are too many opportunities for the highest effort and the highest good to think otherwise. Man's highest hopes and aspirations are yet to be realized and although the men who see the light clearly and follow it, are apt to go far ahead of the busy, practical world, yet they can and will move it somewhat; by their efforts the crowd will be raised to a higher plane and will begin to see the horizon broaden and deepen around them. 'The greatest obstacles to our growth and development into a perfect civilization are not material but moral difficulties' and here the battle must be fought.
Man holds firmly by the natural, to reach The spiritual beyond it,-fixes still The type with mortal vision, to pierce through, With eyes immortal, to the antitype Some called the ideal,-better called the real And certain to be called so presently. When things shall have their names.
STATUTE LAW.
By E. D. GOODIN, LAW DEPARTMENT.
In the study of the law, the reflective mind becomes impressed with the sage utterance of an eminent writer, that, "of all the degrees of authority which man exercises over man, that of legislation is the most august and supreme."
Human authority cannot rightfully abrogate or infringe upon natural law, nor can human wisdom be expected to make legislation entirely good or ethically perfect. When grounded, as all laws should be, in natural justice, and when speaking a language evincing moral and intellectual progress, they exalt and adorn the character of a people. In no feature, more than in her statute laws, is the moral and industrial character of a nation made manifest. By their relative fitness and simplicity they indicate the progress of civilized development and afford material for the formation of the judgment as to lettered skill and intellectual wisdom.
In England the power of parliament in the enactment of laws has no circumscription. No tribunal can question the validity of the lawmaking power. As tersely expressed by Blackstone, parliament may "do everything that is not naturally impossible." With us it is different. In this country the legislative power in the enactment of laws finds its limitation in a written con-