have rejected this teaching because it was not the doctrine of men and because it did not face the facts, and have committed their hearts to the keeping of their highest visions; not because their visions were beautiful or comforting, but because they made life explicable by bringing into view the truth within as well as the truth without the soul; because they have accepted the reality of the mind as well as of the brain, of the affections as well as of the passions, of the intuitions as well as of the instincts, of the imagination as well as of the eye.

These believers in visions, moreover, have refused to accept all witnesses as of equal credibility in the court of reason; and have insisted on an examination of the credentials of those who came to testify concerning the facts of life. They have applied the test of character and have challenged those whose record has given ground for suspicion of their competency and veracity. Shall the evidence of the lawless be counted of equal authority with that of those who hold themselves obedient to the law? Shall the report of the drunkard count with that of the cleareyed man of integrity? Shall the man of ungovernable passions have equal weight with the man who rules himself ? he who sinks to the animal speak with the authority of him who rises to the saint and hero? Shall the liar and thief and sensualist have the weight of the truthful, the honorable, the pure in heart?

Shall

In the great court in which life is on trial these witnesses are incompetent. Their testimony often has the thrilling interest of tragedy, the beauty of delicate art, the impressiveness of ruined greatness; it is profoundly interesting and significant as throwing light on the reactions of lawlessness on mind and body, on morbid conditions of psychology, on diseases of mind and soul; but it has no weight in interpreting the facts of life and penetrating to the meaning of the vast order of things by which men are surrounded. Only the sound in body and mind, the clear-eyed, those to whom obedience to the law of life has brought the knowledge of life, are entitled to credence in the court where life is on trial, the judgment place where its nature and meaning are demanded and must be revealed.

In that august place only the sane have a right to be heard; but it is a pathetic and significant fact that the insane crowd the place of judgment and pour out their woes as if they were the sorrows of mankind instead of the misery they have brought on themselves; as if the uncovering of disease in their own minds and bodies were the uncovering of the health of the race.

Only those protest against the injustice of the moral order of life who have never obeyed it and do not know what wonders of strength and peace are wrought in the hearts of men by obedience. They bare their self-inflicted wounds and say, “Behold the blows of fate!" They dramatize the tragedies of sin of which they have made themselves the victims, and cry aloud, "Behold the misery of the world!" They tell appalling stories of their defeated hopes, their ruined careers, their blighted genius, and say, “This is life."

Is it? Is the beauty of love and selfsacrifice and purity to be found behind prison bars? Are the clear insights, the penetrating glimpses, the far-ranging visions of the possibilities of the human spirit to be sought in the places where the insane are protected from themselves? Many things are to be learned among criminals and the insane; they witness to the inevitableness of the punishment that follows swift-footed on the broken law. But of the vast order which lies behind the law and is protected by it nothing is to be learned in these places of restraint or punishment. The lawbreaker of genius can make an awful picture of the misery that follows the doing of evil; but he has no power to depict the sweetness of purity, the peace of integrity, the joy of love. The destroyers of life know nothing of the exceeding great rewards of life. They fill the air with their outcries and protests, and many are imposed upon by the volume of sound that comes from them; but if they were multiplied a thousandfold, they would still be impotent witnesses to the nature and meaning of life, because they have disqualified themselves from understanding it. They are the witnesses to the tragedy of blinding the eyes and stopping the ears in a world of great visions and noble harmonies.