In the first part of this lecture I drew certain analogies between what has occurred to forms of animal life through the procession of the ages on this planet, and what has occurred and is occurring to the great artificial civilizations which have gradually spread over the world’s surface, during the thousands of years that have elapsed since cities of temples and palaces first rose beside the Nile and the Euphrates, and the harbors of Minoan Crete bristled with the masts of the AEgean craft.  But of course the parallel is true only in the roughest and most general way.  Moreover, even between the civilizations of to-day and the civilizations of ancient times, there are differences so profound that we must be cautious in drawing any conclusions for the present based on what has happened in the past.  While freely admitting all of our follies and weaknesses of to-day, it is yet mere perversity to refuse to realize the incredible advance that has been made in ethical standards.  I do not believe that there is the slightest necessary connection between any weakening of virile force and this advance in the moral standard, this growth of the sense of obligation to one’s neighbor and of reluctance to do that neighbor wrong.  We need have scant patience with that silly cynicism which insists that kindliness of character only accompanies weakness of character.  On the contrary, just as in private life many of the men of strongest character are the very men of loftiest and most exalted morality, so I believe that in national life, as the ages go by, we shall find that the permanent national types will more and more tend to become those in which, though intellect stands high, character stands higher; in which rugged strength and courage, rugged capacity to resist wrongful aggression by others, will go hand in hand with a lofty scorn of doing wrong to others.  This is the type of Timoleon, of Hampden, of Washington, and Lincoln.  These were as good men, as disinterested and unselfish men, as ever served a State; and they were also as strong men as ever founded or saved a State.  Surely such examples prove that there is nothing Utopian in our effort to combine justice and strength in the same nation.  The really high civilizations must themselves supply the antidote to the self-indulgence and love of ease which they tend to produce.

Every modern civilized nation has many and terrible problems to solve within its own borders, problems that arise not merely from juxtaposition of poverty and riches, but especially from the self-consciousness of both poverty and riches.  Each nation must deal with these matters in its own fashion, and yet the spirit in which the problem is approached must ever be fundamentally the same.  It must be a spirit of broad humanity; of brotherly kindness; of acceptance of responsibility, one for each and each for all; and at the same time a spirit as remote as the poles from every form of weakness and sentimentality.  As in war to pardon the coward is to do cruel wrong