No deeper truth of human history has ever been uttered than the statement of the Hebrew poet that man began to be ashamed of himself, of the moral state he found himself in, as soon as he awoke from the slumber of unmoral childhood and learned to distinguish between good and evil.

The perennial dissatisfaction of man with his moral state, his ceaseless endeavor to rise to an ever higher moral station, is the most inspiring fact in the life of mankind and the chiefest motive power of humanity's upward movements. The moral ideals are the results of this irresistible tendency of the human race to self-criticism.

This inextinguishable spirit of discontent with the conditions of the surrounding world and with himself, with his physical and mental and moral powers, is the royal prerogative of man, and is, closely considered, but a trait of character he has inherited from the creative life of the universal Energy. Humanity simply continues on a grand scale and with conscious will-power the impulse of dissatisfaction which Nature herself displays in her processes of evolution. The intellectual and moral selfcriticism of mankind is nothing but the self-criticism of Nature herself taken up by man, the highest representative of her unfolding life, and carried onward by him on a grand scale and with persistent will-power. Evolution, the gradual ascent of Nature from the imperfect to the more perfect, from the inorganic to the organic, the slow but steady rise from the lowest and simplest organisms to higher and ever higher forms of physical and mental life, may be viewed as the expression of Nature's perpetual dissatisfaction with her own past achievements and her effort to reach a higher plane of creative self-manifestation. The history of creation is the history of Nature's selfcriticism and progressing aspirations. The fully-developed solar system may be regarded as Nature's own criticism on the nebulous and undifferentiated state of universal matter. The solid earth whereon we tread, fit to be the habitation

of organic life, is the self-criticism of the creative Power on the earth still weltering in tracts of fluent heat. The birth of organic life on earth was the self-criticism of Nature on the antecedent inorganic state of existence and the beginning realization of a higher creative purpose. Animate life is a criticism and an immense advance upon inanimate organisms. The vertebrates are a criticism upon the invertebrates. In man Nature brought into being her grandest criticism upon all other forms of finite existence. In man Nature produced the highest ideal of her creative aspirations. In him are gathered together and organized all the vital tendencies of her own past. All her mysterious yearnings after the better and best are incarnated in him. To her latest-born and most perfect offspring, to royal man, she has transmitted, as an inheritance from her own life, her divine discontent with whatever has been achieved, her own ceaseless striving to rise from stepping-stone to stepping-stone of excellence to ever higher ends. Nature has given the scepter of progress, which she herself had wielded through countless eons of time, into the hand of man. As man is the epitome of the whole past life of the universe, so is he the conscious standard-bearer of Nature's growing purposes, the exponent and realizer of her ideals. In other words, the Infinite Ground of all existence, that has manifested Himself in the upward evolutions of life, continues to reveal the hidden wealth of His power, wisdom, and goodness in humanity's progressive intellectual, moral, and social ideas.

Nor has man at any period of his history failed to believe that his ideals correspond to what he happened to regard and venerate as the Divine in Nature and in the life of humanity. The divinities of every people are simply the counterparts of the ideals of power and moral excellence entertained by that people. Every God, from the brutal, cruel, and local god of the savage to Yahve, the

Maker of heaven and earth, who is gracious and merciful, long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth, receives adoration, because he is believed to possess in all perfection those attributes of greatness which his worshipers chance to cherish and admire most intensely. As are the ideals of a people, so are the gods thereof. The reason is obvious. The gods are everywhere conceived in the image of the prevailing human ideals. They are reverenced as the realized ideals. Men strive to imitate their qualities and to walk in their ways. Thus, there is a parallelism between the gods of a people and its ideals. As are a people's gods, such are the ideals thereof.

There is another parallelism which should be taken into account, as it plays a most important part in the social, political, and moral life of every people. While the gods are worshiped as the realized ideals, aristocracies of various kinds wield influence and authority, because they are believed to approach nearer the type of the prevailing ideal than the mass of the people. Some sort of aristocracy has always existed among the children of man and will exist, as long as men will cherish ideals of excellence, power, and happiness. Under all conditions, in every society however constituted, there are born into the world some persons who are superior to their fellows in those qualities, and are distinguished above others by that conduct, which the social body prizes most highly. Such persons are the natural-born betters or aristocrats among their fellow-men, whether formally recognized or merely tacitly acknowledged as such. The natural inequality of men will bring to the surface certain persons, to whom pre-eminence comes because they possess in an extraordinary degree those powers and virtues which the necessities of the social environment most require and the ideals of the age commend as most admirable. These betters, or aristocrats, in all pagan societies derived their descent chiefly from the gods of the people, thus asserting

and explaining their claims to superiority by dint of their relationship to the divine beings who were adored and obeyed as the perfect types of power, happiness, and excellence.

Like all things natural and human, physical and spiritual, the idea of what constitutes the essential nature of superiority and greatness has in the life of mankind. undergone a profound and varied process of evolution. On the whole, the development has been in an upward direction, toward ever higher ideals of humanity. Thus, the very qualities and acts which constituted a superior man and worshipful hero among the savage ancestors of the English, would in the England of Cobden and Gladstone mark a man as an atrocious criminal. Instead of enjoying material advantages and social honor, the career of such a person would in all probability be cut short by the avenging hand of the commonwealth. Among some peoples, however, there has in this respect been at sundry times a development downward, a degeneration of the conception of human nobility. It corresponds to, and is caused by, a general degeneration of the moral ideas and the ideal standards of life. The descendants of the Spanish Moors in Morocco have, as in all other respects so with regard to what constitutes true superiority, sadly fallen from the high standard of their refined, chivalrous, and broadminded ancestors. The ferocious and forceful despot, the strong and brutal robber, the ignorant and fierce fanatic, hold the first place and wield the greatest influence among these degenerate descendants of a once noble and highlydeveloped race. Similarly, all retrograding nations go back in their ideals to the ideas of superiority which were entertained by primitive men. Force, physical power occupies among them the first rank, just as it did among the savage ancestors of all living races.

CONTRIBUTIONS OF AMERICA

TO THE WORLD'S

CIVILIZATION.

I.

THE NATURE OF CIVILIZATION.

What contributions has the American people made to the world's civilization? This is no idle question. It is of the deepest concern to us all to know what standing in the scale of humanity the nation has of which we form living parts. For the greatness, the worth and dignity, of a people does not consist in its numbers, nor in the vastness of its territory, but in what it has done and is doing for the growth of the world's civilization. The Hebrews were ever a small, politically feeble people, inhabiting a narrow strip of land, which was largely barren and at best yielded but moderate means of subsistence to its diligent and abstemious cultivators. Yet, who would call in doubt, that this poor, insignificant tribe, whose life has come to be the better half of the spiritual and moral life of mankind, has been an infinitely greater people than any of the mighty conquering races of Asia? The Greek people, the prolific parent of highest art, which has been. and forever will be the inspiration and model of all nations, the sunny Hellenic race, that has bequeathed to us its glorious poetry, far more precious than all the gold and silver in the world, the nation of thinkers, who for the first time in the history of mankind created a science of mind and nature, this nation had mountainous and stony