getting together. The result is a general impression of dullness. A good-roads movement is demanded. It would result in a development of natural resources and stimulate mental activity. This falls within the province of the general gov

ernment.

There is a fine suggestion of this in the eightyfourth psalm. The psalm begins with a note of homesickness. The exiled patriot longs for his dear native land and temple where his fathers worshiped. He envies the sparrow that had found a house and the swallow a nesting-place by the holy altars. Then suddenly the poet changes from homesickness to self-reliance. After all, he says, the difficulty to be overcome is in the mind itself. "Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee, in whose heart are the high ways to Zion."

That direct highway running through the mind may be thronged with eager thoughts. In the opening up of such highways there is the possibility of new prosperity. These internal improvements change the whole situation.

In a constitutionally governed mind the attention is often confined to domestic problems to the neglect of foreign relations. This is mani

fest in the scornful way in which independent young persons often speak of what they term "mere conventionalities." They do not realize what an important part conventionality plays.

The independent nation is not alone in the world, and it cannot do what it pleases without regard to other equally independent nations. Its relation to these foreign powers is governed by a large number of conventions. These treaties represent the peaceful solution of a vast number of problems. They are the things agreed upon by the high contracting powers. They cannot be abrogated lightly. Infinite confusion would be the result if nations were free from these self-imposed limitations to their free action. Treaty rights are insisted upon as a condition of peace.

Precisely the same thing occurs in the case of the individual in his relations with other members of the community. A state of things where every man does what is right in his own eyes, without any regard to what is expected of him, is a condition of anarchy. A man's thought may be free, but his conduct must be largely determined by the conventions of the community in which he lives. They do not represent ultimate

and unchangeable moral laws; they represent the methods agreed upon. When they are changed, it must be by common consent, and after proper diplomatic preparation has been made. The conflicts that arise between what a man, as an individual, prefers, and what is required of him as a member of a highly organized society, cannot be avoided. It is, however, possible to be prepared for them when they come. There is something amiss when we say of a person that he is highly intelligent, high-minded, and conscientious, but somehow he never is able to get on with other people. Before we put all the blame on the other people, we ought to look into the conduct of his foreign office. Perhaps it is a case of too much "shirt-sleeves diplomacy."

SATAN AMONG THE BIOGRAPHERS

By Satan I do not mean the evil spirit who goes about like a roaring lion. I have in mind the Satan who appears in the prologue to the Book of Job. He is the adversary, the one who presents the other side. When the sons of God came together, then came the adversary among them. He belonged to the assembly, but he sat on the opposition bench. He introduced questions which had occurred to him as he walked up and down upon the earth. His function was to challenge generally received opinions. There was Job. Every one looked upon him as a man who was as righteous as he was prosperous. But was he? Satan suggested that his character should be analyzed. Take away Job's prosperity and let us see what becomes of his righteousness.

Now, that critical spirit has entered into the biographers and influenced their attitude toward what they used to call the subject of their sketch. It used to be taken for granted that the tone of biography should be eulogistic. "Let us praise famous men and the fathers who begat us.”

This indicates how closely biography is related to genealogy. The text is often transformed into "Let us praise the fathers who begat us, and if we have sufficient literary skill we may make them famous."

The lives of the saints have a great sameness, for it is necessary that they should be saintly. Even when their adventures are of the most astonishing character, the chronicler must throw in a word now and then to show that they are not acting out of character. Thus that wild Irish saint, Saint Brandan, who went careering over the Western Sea like another Sindbad the Sailor, must have a religious motive for his voyage. The chronicler declares, "seven years on the back of a whale he rode, which was a difficult mode of piety." Had Brandan been a layman, we might have admired him for his acrobatic gifts. Being a saint, we must see him balancing himself on the back of a whale as a pious exercise.

Biographers on the whole have been a rather modest folk and have had scant recognition in academic circles. Thus there are numberless professors of history - ancient and modern - but when recently a Minnesota college established a