PROGRESS AND SPIRIT OF THE AGE. The Intermountain Republican of the 12th inst. noticing the prevalence of crime and the rapid increase in-crease of murders and of suicides and the shocking revelations of our divorce courts, indulges in the following serious reflection: "With such recitals as those we have mentioned, if this age be not a receding one, it is progressing but in what? In the brutality of crime and in. the refinement of immorality in its conception and execution." ex-ecution." This is a valuable commentary on' the secular school system of our country. We do not pretend, no informed Catholic ever did pretend, that the system sys-tem would increase crime; but we have always insisted in-sisted that, as crime is indicative of moral rather than intellectual depravity, a remedy applied to the intellect alone, that is the education only of the intellect, can do nothing in arresting the flow of crime, though it may and does tend to modify.its modes of manifestation. The educated or half -educated criminal will display dis-play both in the conception and carrying out of his designs, a cunning, a refinement, an astuteness and intelligence which do not belong to the illiterate murderer, or the ignorant sneak thief. A cleverly , i - designed homicide and an artistically executed robbery, rob-bery, though the perverted ingenuity by which they are effected may excite our admiration, are as damaging dam-aging to society, even from a material point of view, as are those more clumsily planned and more buuglingly carried out. Refinement, both in the conception and execution execu-tion of crime, is the only result that may be excepted ex-cepted from a secular system of education that is to say, a system of education which appeals to the intellect onlv. "The heart's all, the part's all That makes us right or wrong." Burns was right if- the heart be corrupt, the whole man is corrupt; honor has fled the man is dead. Any system of education which leaves out the training of the heart is rotten. Perplexed as parents are liable to be. with a multiplicity of novel changes in our educational system, let them determine deter-mine that no system can be effective for good that does not embrace learning, morals and religion, or at least the fear and love of God. The aim of all education should be to cultivate the minds of the young ami adorn them with all the knowledge which they are capable of receiving; next to educate and regulate their hearts in principles prin-ciples of honor and honesty, in order to make them good citizens, or men of the "square deal"; and lastly, as the perfection and consummation of the educational course, to actuate them with the spirit of sincere Christians. Stato-schoolism is not doing this. Then it is rir. outrage on the rights of the family, to which and not the state, the business of education belongs. Our criminal statistics show it to be a sad waste of money an argument which appealing to the pocket may eventually have more influence in its abrogation than increase of crime.