In an age when the achievements of philosophical investigation...

In an age when the achievements of philosophical investigation and inventive genius are so wondrous, when the triumph of Mind over matter is witnessed to in so many ways, and the so-called civilization of the more advanced nations is rapidly supplanting the untutored life of the indigenous races, it is not surprising that human reason should come to be regarded by many as "the key to the kingdom,"—the means by which all problems are to be solved, all difficulties overcome, all ills relieved, so that the race may find itself and come into the fulness of its own. The repose of this confidence can but be disturbed, however, by the fact that intellectuality is not found to have any necessary affiliation with virtue, that gain in so-called rationality and in the control of material conditions is not infrequently attended by an increased indulgence of those appetites and impulses which indicate moral weakness and degeneracy, so that it becomes a serious question whether after all the asserted advance of civilization has been genuine or merely a seeming.