“Once more I warn you of the dangers of that life which you are about to enter. Let not your minds be swept away by the swift currents everywhere rushing they know not whither, all human society rising in great waves on some tidal throe which may land it on a higher plane, or may cast it into the abyss, one leader with a blazing torch striving in the name of Liberty to shut the gate of heaven, and the other, his unconscious accomplice, in the name of Order, setting wide the gates of hell.
“Trust not the visionary who will tell you that science everywhere diffused will bring an age of gold. Trust not the bigot who will say that knowledge is for the few.
“Trust not those orators who, intoxicated by the sound of their own voices, proclaim that from the platform where they stand gesticulating they can see the promised land. Long since the Afghan heard just such a voice, and made his proverb on it: ‘The frog, mounted on a clod, said he had seen Kashmir.’
“Wait, and examine. Look at both sides of a question, before you form an opinion.
“See what children we were but yesterday. We thought that we knew the Earth. Complacently we told its age, and all its story. We told of a new world discovered four hundred years ago, of its primeval forests and virgin soil, of its unwritten pages on which we should inscribe the opening chapters of a new Genesis. And, lo! the new world, like the old, is but a palimpsest! Under the virgin soil is found a sculptured stone; through the unlettered seas rise the volcanic peaks of lost Atlantis. The insulted spirit of the past lifts everywhere a warning finger from the dust. It points to the satanic promise: Ye shall be as gods. It points us to the tower of Babel. It underlines the haughty Jewish boast: Against the children of Israel shall not a dog wag his tongue. Samples every one of arrogant pride followed by catastrophe sudden, utter, and inevitable.
“In the face of such a past, can we make sure of our stability? We cannot. Beware of pride. Unless the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. Unless the Lord keep the city, he watcheth in vain that keepeth it.
“Hold yourselves aloof from any party that excludes your King. Bind yourselves by no oaths, and have no fellowship with him who has taken an oath.
“If a man sin, and hurt no other knowingly, be silent and save your own souls. If he sin in wronging another, speak for his victim, or bear the guilt of an accomplice. Do not sophisticate. You are your brother’s keeper, or his Cain.
“Do not bid a sufferer be calm, nor talk of reason to him while he writhes in anguish. The man of cold blood may be as unreasonable as the man in a passion. There is a reason of flame as well as a reason of snow.
“Remember that freedom means freedom from criticism as well as from force.