For there is no such thing as one nation standing out and maintaining indefinitely a social spirit, an attitude toward life and society absolutely distinct and different from that of the surrounding world.  The character of a society is determined by the character of its ideas, and neither tariffs nor coastal defenses are really efficient in preventing the invasion of ideas, good or bad.  The difference between the kind of society which exists in Illinois today and that which existed there 500 years ago is not a difference of physical vigor or of the raw materials of nature; the Indian was as good a man physically as the modern Chicagoan, and possessed the same soil.  What makes the difference between the two is accumulated knowledge, the mind.  And there never was yet on this planet a change of ideas which did not sooner or later affect the whole planet.

The “nations” that inhabited this continent a couple of thousand years ago were apparently quite unconcerned with what went on in Europe or Asia, say, in the domain of mathematical and astronomical knowledge.  But the ultimate effect of that knowledge on navigation and discovery was destined to affect them—­and us—­profoundly.  But the reaction of European thought upon this continent, which originally required twenty, or, for that matter, two hundred or two thousand years to show itself, now shows itself, in the industrial and commercial field, for instance, through our banking and Stock Exchanges, in as many hours, or, for that matter, minutes.

It is difficult, of course, for us to realize the extent to which each nation owes its civilization to others, how we have all lived by taking in each other’s washing.  As Americans, for instance, we have to make a definite effort properly to realize that our institutions, the sanctity of our homes and all the other things upon which we pride ourselves, are the result of anything but the unaided efforts of a generation or two of Americans, perhaps owing a little to certain of the traditions that we may have taken from Britain.

One has to stop and uproot impressions that are almost instinctive, to remember that our forefathers reached these shores by virtue of knowledge which they owed to the astronomical researches of Egyptians and Chaldeans, who inspired the astronomers of Greece, who inspired those of the Renaissance in Italy, Spain, and Germany, keeping alive and developing not merely the art of measuring space and time, but also that conception of order in external nature without which the growth of organized knowledge, which we call science, enabling men to carry on their exploitation of the world, would have been impossible; that our very alphabet comes from Rome, who owed it to others; that the mathematical foundation of our modern mechanical science—­without which neither Newton nor Watt nor Stevenson nor Ericson nor Faraday nor Edison could have been—­is the work of Arabs, strengthened by Greeks, protected