generally, wealth may very greatly influence modern political life, but it is not acquired in political life.  The colonial administrators, German or American, French or English, of this generation lead careers which, as compared with the careers of other men of like ability, show too little rather than too much regard for money-making; and literally a world scandal would be caused by conduct which a Roman proconsul would have regarded as moderate, and which would not have been especially uncommon even in the administration of England a century and a half ago.  On the whole, the great statesmen of the last few generations have been either men of moderate means, or, if men of wealth, men whose wealth was diminished rather than increased by their public services.

I have dwelt on these points merely because it is well to emphasize in the most emphatic fashion the fact that in many respects there is a complete lack of analogy between the civilization of to-day and the only other civilization in any way comparable to it, that of the ancient Graeco-Roman lands.  There are, of course, many points in which the analogy is close, and in some of these points the resemblances are as ominous as they are striking.  But most striking of all is the fact that in point of physical extent, of wide diversity of interest, and of extreme velocity of movement, the present civilization can be compared to nothing that has ever gone before.  It is now literally a world movement, and the movement is growing ever more rapid and is ever reaching into new fields.  Any considerable influence exerted at one point is certain to be felt with greater or less effect at almost every other point.  Every path of activity open to the human intellect is followed with an eagerness and success never hitherto dreamed of.  We have established complete liberty of conscience, and, in consequence, a complete liberty for mental activity.  All free and daring souls have before them a well-nigh limitless opening for endeavor of any kind.

Hitherto every civilization that has arisen has been able to develop only a comparatively few activities; that is, its field of endeavor has been limited in kind as well as in locality.  There have, of course, been great movements, but they were of practically only one form of activity; and although usually this set in motion other kinds of activities, such was not always the case.  The great religious movements have been the pre-eminent examples of this type.  But they are not the only ones.  Such peoples as the Mongols and the Phoenicians, at almost opposite poles of cultivation, have represented movements in which one element, military or commercial, so overshadowed all other elements that the movement died out chiefly because it was one-sided.  The extraordinary outburst of activity among the Mongols of the thirteenth century was almost purely a military movement, without even any great administrative side; and it was therefore well-nigh purely a movement of destruction.  The