pass is worth the paper it is printed on if it is contrary to the Constitution. Such laws have been passed ignorantly, and have died. the members of the House of Representatives (chosen by the citizens), who sit for two years only unless re-elected. The Senate is supposed to be the more conservative body, not easily moved by popular clamor; while the Representatives, chosen directly and recently by the voters, are supposed to know the immediate wants of the people. The thought of two houses grew probably from the two houses of the British parliament. A very simple illustration is at hand. The constitution of this College is Mr. Girard's will. This is our charter. The laws which the Directors make must be within the provisions of the will or they will not stand. For instance, the will directs that none but orphans can be admitted here; and the courts have decided that a child without a father is an orphan. The Directors, therefore, cannot admit the child who has a father living. The will says that only boys can be admitted; therefore no law that the Directors can make will admit a girl. Nor can the Directors make a law which will admit a colored boy; nor a boy under six nor over ten years of age; nor a boy born anywhere except in certain states of our country-real influence. There is no better reason Pennsylvania, New York and Louisiana. It would be unconstitutional. I think now you see the difference between the Constitution and the laws. Now, again, is our government better than a monarchy? and why? Because the men of the present time make it, and are not bound by the traditions of far-off times. There are improvements in the science of government as in all other human inventions, as the centuries come and go. Man is progressive; he would not be worth caring for if he were not. If the present age has not produced a higher and better development in all essentials, it is our own fault, and is not because men were perfect in the past or cannot be better in the present or in the future. Therefore when our Constitution is believed not to meet the requirements of the present day there is a way to amend it, although that way is so hedged up that it cannot possibly be altered without ample time for consideration. As a matter of fact the Constitution has been altered or amended fifteen times since its adoption; and it will be changed or amended as often as the needs of the people require it. We believe our form of government to be better than any monarchy because the people choose their own lawmakers. The Congress is composed of two houses or chambers: the members of the Senate, chosen by the legislatures of the states, two from each state, to serve for six years; We cannot have an hereditary legislature like the House of Lords in the British parliament, whose members sit as the sovereign rules, by divine right, as they say; and with the same result in some instances for the sovereign may be a mere figure-head, or only the nominal ruler, while the cabinet is the real government, and the House of Lords long ago sunk far below the House of Commons in for this than the fact that the people have nothing to do with the House of Lords and the sovereign, except to depose and scatter them when they choose to rise in their power and assert themselves. This We can have no orders of nobility under our Constitution. There can be no privileged class. All men are equal under the law. I do not mean that all persons are equal in all respects. Divine Providence has made us unequal. Some are endowed naturally with the highest mental and physical gifts and distinctions; some are strong and others weak. has always been so and always will be so. Some have inherited or acquired riches, while others have to labor diligently to make a bare living. Some have inherited their high culture and gentle manners and noble instincts, which, in a general sense, we sometimes call culture; and others have to acquire all this for themselves,— and it is not very easy to get it. So there is no such thing as absolute equality, and cannot be; but before the law, in the enjoyment of our rights and in the undisturbed possession of what we have, we are all equal, as we could not be under a monarchy. Here there is no legal bar to success; all places are open to all. There can be no law of primogeniture under our Constitution. By this law, which still prevails in England, the eldest son inherits the titles and estates of the father, while the younger sons and all the daughters must be provided for in other ways. Some of the sons are put in the church, in the army or the navy, or in the professions, such as law and medicine; but it is very rare indeed that any son of a noble house is willing to engage in any kind of business or trade, for they are not so well thought of if they become trades men. occupations makes it necessary to employ women to do work which in our country women are never asked to do. I have seen a woman drawing a boat on a canal, and a man sitting on the deck of that boat smoking his pipe and steering the boat. I have seen a woman with a huge load of fresh hay upon her head, and a man walking by her side and carrying his scythe. I have seen women yoked with dogs to carts, carrying the loads that here would be put in a cart and drawn by a horse. I have seen women carrying the hod for Eng-masons on their heads, filled with stone and mortar. I have seen women carrying huge baskets of manure on their backs to the field, and young girls breaking stone on the highway. Did you ever hear of such things here? See what a difference! The men in the army eat up the substance which the women produce from the soil. There can be no state church, no establishment, under our Constitution. In England the Episcopal Church, and in Scotland the Presbyterian Church, are established by law; and until within the last seventeen years, the Church of land was by law established in Ireland, and it is now established in Wales; and in other countries of Europe the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran Church and the Greek Church are established by law. In countries where there is a national church it derives more or less of its support from taxing the people, many of whom do not belong to it; but in this land there is no established church, and there never can be, let us hope and believe. Under our form of government we need no standing army. We owe this partly to the fact that we are so isolated geographically that we do not need to keep an army. I heard the general of our army say, a short time ago, that the regular army of the United States is a fiction -only 25,000 men. (You sa as many troops a few weeks ago in one day as are in all our army.) "The real army," he added, "is composed of every able-bodied citizen; for all are ready to volunteer in the face of a common enemy." Our territory is immensely large already and it will probably be larger, but it will not again be enlarged as the result of war. When we look at the nations of Europe, and see the immense numbers of men in their standing armies, we can't help thanking God that we are separated from them by the wide Atlantic and that we have a republican government and have no temptation to seek other territory, and are not likely to be attacked for any cause. In the armies of Great Britain, Germany, Russia, Austria, Italy, Turkey, are more than ten millions of men withdrawn from the cultivation of the soil and from the pursuits of commerce and manufactures. In Italy alone the standing army is said to be 750,000 men! The withdrawal of so many men from peaceful But nowhere else in the world is the dignity of labor recognized as here. They do not know the meaning of the words. For in most other countries it is considered undignified, if not ungenteel, to be engaged in labor of any kind. A man who is not able to live without work is hardly considered a gentleman. To work with the hands is degrading, is what ought to be done by common people only, and by people who are not fit to associate with gentlemen and ladies. It is not so in this country. Here, a man who is well educated and well behaved, and upright and honorable in his dealings with men, who cultivates his mind by reading and observation, and is careful of the usages of good society, is fit company for any one. He may rise to any place within the gift of his fellow-citizens, and adorn it. is not so elsewhere. And think of a young girl hardly out of her teens, with no special preparation for such a distinction, but educated and accomplished, becoming the wife of the President of the United States and proving herself entirely worthy of that high position! Could any other country match this? This Now what is the effect of all this freedom of thought and action on the people? Well, it is not to be denied that there are some disadvantages. There is danger that we may overestimate the individual in his personal rights and not give due weight to the people as a community. There is danger of selfishness, especially among young people. There is not as much re- | spect and reverence for age and for those above us, and for the other sex, as there ought to be. Young people are very rude at times, when they should always be polite to their superiors in age or position. At a little city in Bavaria the boys coming out of school one day all lifted their hats to me, a stranger! That would be an astounding thing in a Philadelphia street! In riding in the neighborhood of the city here, if I speak civilly to a boy by the roadside, I am just as likely as not to get an impudent answer. God, give us men. A time like this demands Men whom the lust of office does not kill; Men who have honor, men who will not lie; And scorn his treacherous flatteries without Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US? [Friedrich Maximilian Müller (better known as Max Müller), a distinguished German Orient born at Dessau, in Anhalt, 1823. Educated at Leipzig and Berlin, he gave himself exclusively to Snskrit studies. Coming to Paris in 1845, he studied with Burnouf, and projected an edition of the Rigveda. He went to London in 1846, and was made professor of lit erary history and comparative grammar at Oxford University in 1850, and in 1868 elected professor of comparative philology, a department created expressly for him. Resigning this chair in 1875, he has since But in spite of these defects, which we hope will never be seen in a Girard College boy, the true effect of training under our republican institutions is to make men. There is a wider, freer, fuller development of what is in man than is known elsewhere. Man is much more likely to become self-alist, reliant, self-dependent, vigorous, skilful, here-not knowing how high he may rise, and consciously or unconsciously preparing himself for anything to which he may be called. And for woman, too, where else does she meet the respect that belongs to her? Where else in the world do women find occupation in government offices, on school boards, at the head of charitable and educational institutions? With few exceptions, such as Girton College, where are there in any other country such colleges as Vassar or Wellesley, and as the Woman's Medical College, almost under the walls of our own? devoted himself with the zeal of an enthusiastic scholar to the literature and languages of the East. In the science of philology he has few rivals and no superior, and his learning in all Oriental subjects is most extensive and accurate. Of Max Müller's numerous works the principal are: The German Classics from the Fourth to the Nineteenth Century (1859); History of Sanskrit Literature (1859); But Lectures on the Science of Language, 2 vols. (1859); The Science of Religion (1873); and Chips from a German notes, of all The Sacred Books of the East, translated by various Oriental scholars, of which thirty-three vol umes have been published at Oxford up to 1887.] I have already kept you too long. a few words and I am done. I am moved by the injunction of Mr. Girard in his will not only to say these things, but has been the editing, with careful introductions and by this grave consideration also: every boy who hears me to-day, within fifteen years, if he lives, unless he is cut off by crime from the privilege, will be a voter. You will go to the polls to cast your votes for those who are to have the conduct of the government in all its parts. I want to make you feel, if I can, the high destiny that awaits you. You are distinctive in this respect--you are all American boys. This can be said of no other assembly as large as this in all this broad land. You have it in your power, and I want to help you to it, and God will if you ask himyou have it in your power to become American gentlemen. And I believe that an American gentleman is the very highest type of man. If I were to look over the whole world to find out the country most richly endowed with all the wealth, power, and beauty that nature can bestow-in some parts a very Paradise on earth—I should point to India. If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions of some of them which well deserve the attention even of those who have studied Plato and Kant-I should point to India. And if I were to ask myself from what literature we, here in Europe, we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans, and of one Semitic race-the Jewish-may draw that corrective which is most warted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact, more truly human-a life not for this life only, but a transfigured and eternal life-again I should point to India. who is just now rushing through Indian forests and dredging in Indian seas, and to whom his stay in India is like the realization of the brightest dream of his life. If you are interested in ethnology, why India is like a living ethnological museum. If you are fond of archæology, if you have ever assisted at the opening of a barrow in England, and know the delight of finding a fibula, or a knife, or a flint, in a heap of rubbish, read only General Cunningham's Annual Reports of the Archa orological Survey of India, and you will be impatient for the time when you can take your spade and bring to light the ancient Vihâras or colleges built by the Buddhist monarchs of India. I know you will be surprised to hear me say this. I know that more particularly those who have spent many years of active life in Calcutta, or Bombay, Madras, will be horror-struck at the idea that the humanity they meet with there, whether in the bazaars or in the courts of justice, or in so-called native society, should be able to teach us any lessons. Let me, therefore, explain at once to my friends who may have lived in India for years, as civil servants, or officers, or missionaries, or merchants, and who ought to know a great deal more of that country than one who has never set foot on the soil of Aryâvarta, that we are speaking of two very different Indias. I am thinking chiefly of India such as it was a thousand, two thousand, it may be three thousand years ago; they think of the India of today. And again, when thinking of the India of to-day, they remember chiefly the India of Calcutta, Bombay, or Madras, the India of the towns. I look to the India of the village communities, the true India of the Indians. What I wish to show to you, I mean more especially the candidates for the India Civil Service, is that this India of a thousand, or two thousand, or three thousand years ago, aye, the India of to-day also, if only you knew where to look for it, is full of problems, the solution of which concerns all of us, even us in this Europe of the nineteenth century. If you have acquired any special tastes here in England, you will find plenty to satisfy them in India; and whoever has learnt to take an interest in any of the great problems that occupy the best thinkers and workers at home, need certainly not be afraid of India proving to him an intellectual exile. If ever you amused yourselves with collecting coins, why the soil of India teems with coins-Persian, Carian, Thracian, Parthian, Greek, Macedonian, Scythian, Roman,' and Mohammedan. When Warren Hastings was governor-general, an earthen pot was found on the bank of a river, in the province of Benares, containing 172 gold Darics.2 Warren Hastings considered himself as making the most munificent present to his masters that he might ever have it in his power to send them, by presenting those ancient coins to the Court of Directors. The story is that they were sent to the melting-pot. At all events they had disappeared when Warren Hastings returned to England. rests with you to prevent the revival of such vandalism. It In one of the last numbers of the Asiatic Journal of Bengal you may read of the discovery of a treasure as rich in gold almost as some of the tombs opened by Dr. Schliemann at Mykenæ; nay, I should add, perhaps not quite unconnected with some of the treasures found at Mykenæ, yet hardly any one has taken notice of it in England! The study of mythology has assumed an entirely new character, chiefly owing to the light that has been thrown on it by the ancient Vedic mythology of India. 1 Pliny (VI. 26) tells us that in his day the annual drain of bullion into India, in return for her valuable If you care for geology, there is work produce, reached the immense amount of "five hunfor you from the Himalayas to Ceylon. If you are fond of botany, there is a flora rich enough for many Hookers. dred and fifty millions of sesterces." The Indian Balharú, p. 13. See E. Thomas, 2 Cunningham, in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of If you are a zoologist, think of Haeckel, | Bengal (1881), p. 184. But though the foundation of a true science of mythology has been laid, all the detail has still to be worked out, and could be worked out nowhere better than in India. 1 Even the study of fables owes its new life to India, from whence the various migrations of fables have been traced at various times and through various channels from East to West. Buddhism is now known to have been the principal source of our legends and parables. But here, too, many problems still wait for their solution. Think, for instance, of the allusion to the fable of the donkey in the lion's skin, which occurs in Plato's Cratylus. Was that borrowed from the East? Ör take the fable of the weasel changed by Aphrodite into a woman who, when she saw a mouse, could not refrain from making a spring at it. This, too, is very like a Sanskrit fable, but how, then, could it have been brought into Greece early enough to appear in one of the comedies of Strattis, about 400 B. C. ?3 Here, too, there is still plenty of work to do. We may go back even further into antiquity, and still find strange coincidences between the legends of India and the legends of the West, without as yet being able to say how they travelled, whether from East to West, or from West to East. That at the time of Solomon there was a channel of communication open between India, and Syria, and Palestine, is established beyond doubt, I believe, by certain Sanskrit words which occur in the Bible as names of articles of export from Ophir, articles such as ivory, apes, peacocks, and sandal-wood, which, taken together, could not have been ex 1 See Selected Essays, Vol. I., p. 500, “The Migration of Fables." 2 Cratylus, 411 A: "Still, as I have put on the lion's skin, I must not be faint-hearted." Possibly, however, this may refer to Hercules, and not to the fable of the ported from any country but India. Nor is there any reason to suppose that the commercial intercourse between India, the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, and the Mediterranean was ever completely interrupted, even at the time when the Book of Kings is supposed to have been written. Now, you remember the judgment of Solomon, which has always been admired as a proof of great legal wisdom among the Jews. I must confess that, not having a legal mind, I never could suppress a certain shudder when reading the decision of Solomon : "Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one, and half to the other." Let me now tell you the same story as it is told by the Buddhists, whose sacred Canon is full of such legends and parables. In the Kanjur, which is the Tibetan translation of the Buddhist Tripitaka, we likewise read of two women who claimed each to be the mother of the same child. The king, after listening to their quarrels for a long time, gave it up as hopeless to settle who was the real mother. Upon this Visâkhâ stepped forward and said: "What is the use of examining and crossexamining these women? Let them take the boy and settle it among themselves." Thereupon both women fell on the child, and when the fight became violent, the child was hurt and began to cry. Then one of them let him go, because she could not bear to hear the child cry. That settled the question. The king gave the child to the true mother, and had the other beaten with a rod. This seems to me, if not the more primitive, yet the more natural form of the story-showing a deeper knowledge of human nature, and more wisdom than even the wisdom of Solomon." Many of you may have studied not only languages, but also the Science of Language, and is there any country in which some of the most important problems of donkey in the lion's or the tiger's skin. In the Hitopa- that science, say only the growth and de desa, a donkey, being nearly starved, is sent by his master into a cornfield to feed. In order to shield him he puts a tiger's skin on him. All goes well till a watchman approaches, hiding himself under his gray coat, and trying to shoot the tiger. The donkey thinks it is a gray female donkey, begins to bray, and is killed. On a similar fable in Esop, see Benfey, Pantschatantra, Vol. I., p. 463; M. M. Selected Essays, Vol. I., p. 513. 3 See Fragmenta Comic. (Didot), p. 302; Benfey, 1. c. Vol. 1, p. 374. cay of dialects, or the possible mixture of 4 Lectures on the Science of Language, Vol. I., p. 231. 5 I Kings iii. 25. 6 See some excellent remarks on this subject in Rhys Davids' Buddhist Birth Stories, Vol. I., pp. xiii and xliv. The learned scholar gives another version of the story from a Singhalese translation of the Gâtaka, dating from the fourteenth century, and he expresses a hope that M. Fausböll will soon publish the Pâli original. |