To hinder the extinction of the great light of Rome in the world, to prolong indefinitely this ideal survival, which is the continuation of its material Empire, destroyed centuries ago, there is but one way—­to renew historic studies of Rome, and to maintain intact their universal value which forms part of common culture.  This is what I have tried to do, seeking to lead back to Roman history the many minds estranged from it, distracted by so many cares and anxieties and present questionings, and to fulfil a solemn duty to my fatherland and the grand traditions of Latin culture.  If other histories can grow old, it is indeed the more needful, exactly because it serves to educate new generations, to reanimate Roman history, incorporating in it the new facts constantly discovered by archaeological effort, infusing it with a larger and stronger philosophical spirit, carrying into it the matured experience of the world, which learns not only by studying but also by living.

I do not hesitate to say that every half-century there opens among civilised peoples a contest to find the new conception of Roman history, which, suited to the changed needs, may revivify classical studies; a competition followed by no despicable prize, the intellectual influence that a people may exercise on other peoples by means of these studies.  To win in this contest we must never forget, as too many of us have done in the past thirty years, that a man can rule and refashion the world from the depths of a library, but only on condition that he does not immure himself there; that, while the physical sciences propose to understand matter in order to transform it, historico-philosophical discipline has for its end action upon the mind and the will; that philosophical ideas and historic teachings are but seeds shut up to themselves unless they enter the soil of the universal intellectual life.

No:  the time-stained marbles of Rome must not end beside cuneiform-inscribed bricks or Egyptian mummies, in the vast dead sections of archaeological halls; they must serve to pave for our feet the way that leads to the future.  Therefore nothing could have been pleasanter or more grateful to me, after receiving the invitation tendered me by the College de France, and that from South America, than to accept the invitation of the First Citizen of the United States to visit this world which is being formed.  In Paris, that wonderful metropolis of the Latin world, I had the joy, the highest reward for my long, hard labour, to show to the incredulous how much alive the supposedly dead history of Rome still is, when on those unforgettable days so cosmopolite a public gathered from every part of the city in the small plain hall of the old and august edifice.  Coming into your midst, I feel that the history of Rome lives not only in the interest with which you have followed these lectures, but also, even if in part without clear cognisance, in things here, in the life you