History is a
stream, in the remoter antiquity of Egypt and Mesopotamia confined
within narrow and comparatively definite banks, gathering in volume and
swiftness as it flows through Hellenic lands, and at last expanding into
the broad and deep basin of Rome, whence its current, dividing, leads
away in various channels to other ample basins, perhaps in the course of
time to reunite at some great meeting of waters in the New World. To one
afloat in the swirl of contradictory eddies, it may be difficult to
judge of the whence and whither of the troubled current, but the ascent
of the stream and the exploration of the sources of literature and the
arts, of morals, politics, and religion, of commerce and mechanics, is
on the whole no difficult adventure.
Finally, civilization is not only a matter of local habitation, but a
matter of individual men. The great city is both determined by, and
determines, its environment; the great man is the product, and in turn
the producer, of the culture of his nation. The human race is gregarious
and sequacious, rather than individual and adventurous. Progress depends
upon the initiative of spirited and gifted men, rather than upon the
tardy movement of the mass, upon idea rather than force, upon spirit
rather than matter.
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