Page:Zawis and Kunigunde (1895).djvu/151

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MARRIAGE OF ZAWIS AND KUNIGUNDE
147

compelled to imbibe this from fountains opened to us by others outside the domains of the church, and when we instruct young persons in the arts necessary to secure sustenance, we think we have completed their education. We first make their hearts tender and susceptible, then we bestow an art or an occupation; but the third element of the essential trinity of permanent life, the art of preserving what they can procure or acquire, we omit altogether. Suppose, for instance, we train a youth in all morality, until he abhors evil, we then instruct him in the art and skill necessary to produce a gem like this,” drawing forth the identical casket containing the identical cross secured by Pietro and Solomon, “and we allow him to confront the world knowing not how to preserve and protect himself from the abounding fraud, violence, treachery, and seductions of society, we render him only a helpless victim. His virtue incites him to good; his skill enriches him with wealth; and his simplicity renders him only a prey to the seducer and the thief. We do not teach business in our schools; we banish business from our politics, we eschew business from our morals; and we think to build up, to defend, and exalt Bohemia by sentimentalism. This is the new deception that has broken our strength, and prostrated us before Cumanian barbarism. Under the seductive and insinuating false charm of the new theology, all practical science has been banished; all study of medicine has been proscribed under the direst penalties; all secular knowledge denounced as the agency of the