of political parties this history will not concern itself except as the aspirations and passions of men, now facing death in defense of an ideal, then engaged in a peaceful but equally determined struggle to preserve that ideal, so moulded character that they produced a new type and gave to the world a

new race.

For although the American people spring from an old stock and have been influenced by many races and the civilization of all races, climate, environment, social conditions, and a system of political philosophy far-reaching in its moral influence have produced not a mongrel race but mentally and physically a new race. "In a society living, growing, changing, every new factor becomes a permanent force; modifying more or less the direction of movement determined by the aggregate of forces." In both the animal and the vegetable kingdoms species, by the irresistible law of evolution and their adjustment to new conditions, retain many of the characteristics of the parent stock, but by conforming to their environment in the struggle for existence create a new his has been accomplished in the American people after little more than a century of national existence. They are not English, although they speak and think in English. They are not German, or Irish, or French, although the Germans, the Irish, the French, and many other races have influenced them. Saxon, Teuton, Celt, Latin

1 Spencer: The Study of ociology, p. 95.

have been the elements fused in the alembic of a social, political, and moral code which have produced a new metal with many of the attributes of its constituent elements but with properties of its own.

In history there are no haphazard events, although at times there is no juxtaposition of cause and effect, and the real meaning can be interpreted only when it is projected on the background of age. Superficial thinking and inaccurate investigation ascribe a divine or miraculous interposition to events that are the result of purely human action, which is as convenient for the historian and saves him as much trouble in his search for first causes as it was for the persecutors of witches to obtain a conviction on "spectral evidence."

In the study of race growth, which is the study of the ever advancing tide of civilization, although there are times when the tide appears to ebb, two facts obtrude themselves so insistently that their significance cannot be mistaken. One is that history using that term in its broadest sense as embracing all human activity and its progress and development — is written on a palimpsest; the other is that mankind does not learn from the teachings of the past, but knowledge comes only from experience. In this the race differs not at all from the individual, who is taught the great lesson of life not from the wisdom of the ancients, which is common to all, but by that knowledge which is peculiar to himself.

If it were otherwise, if the discipline of the long line of the past counted for anything, the wheel of life would revolve more slowly but on a truer centre. With monotonous, exasperating regularity the follies, the errors, the crimes of former generations are repeated by the present. If the guide of the past were effectual the world after a thousand years would not allow its emotions to run riot; it would know that every emotion exacts its price, "for life goes on from generation to generation without heeding the wisdom of the wise or the goodness of the good. Her force breaks out afresh in every child that is born."

Fundamentally human nature does not change. It advances with the ever advancing perfection of mechanical progress (it is an interesting speculation whether civilization is the result of mechanical improvement or mechanical improvement produces civilization), its morals and manners adjust themselves to a conventional standard, and however inadequate they may appear viewed from the present were all sufficient for their age, and, it is important to remember, were a stage in the higher development of civilization. All the great developments of the internal man, Guizot says, have turned to the profit of society; all the great developments of the social stage to the profit of the individual man.1 But while society has changed extrinsically, in all that is organic it is the same. Truth, honesty, jus

1 Guizot: History of Civilization, vol. i, p. 14.

tice are the cardinal virtues of an age that prides itself on having attained the summit of civilization, but they are the virtues that have been handed down from the past and are not the creation of the present. Wherein does the moral training of our children differ from that of the Persians, or how have we improved upon their theory or practice? "The moral nature of the child was trained with assiduous attention. As far as possible, it was preserved from contact with vice, while the virtues of self-control, truthfulness, and justice were constantly enjoined and practiced. Ingratitude and lying were considered the most shameful vices, while truthfulness was looked on as the highest virtue." The wheel of civilization forever revolves, but its mass is so immense and it turns with such deliberation that man the pigmy, with narrowed vision, in the conceit of pride in what he believes to be discoveries, sees only what is before his eyes and thinks he has beheld a new truth, and all that he has seen is the civilization of the past in its periodic return coming to the surface to confound the present.

Nor is it only in morals that the present repeats the past. The diversions of the idle rich in all ages show a singular similitude. The unrestrained license of undergraduates celebrating their triumphs on the river or the football field is merely the survival of the days of the Restoration, when it was

1 Painter: A History of Education, p. 22.

the fashion for dissolute young men to band together to molest respectable people in the streets. Yet the worthy burgesses of London who were the victims of the curious sense of humor entertained by the Mohocks simply experienced the fate of the citizens of Rome at the height of her glory, when elegant aristocrats found their sport in rudely assaulting quiet citizens returning from dinner, or plundering some poor huckster's stall in the Suburra, or insulting a lady in her chair.1 In little things "often regarded as peculiar to America," an American writer satirically remarks, “we are only preserving old English forms and customs. For example, when a vigilance committee in the South or West decorate an obnoxious stranger with a coat of tar and feathers, they are only exercising a form of English hospitality practiced in the seventeenth century." The wheel forever revolves.

If I emphasize that in the progress of society nothing is new and at every stage its virtues and vices are simply a reproduction of society at a former period, it is because the lesson is peculiarly applicable to the United States. Many Europeans who have written of the United States with the spirit of the philosopher or the historian, without deliberate intent, but in good faith, adopt this mental attitude: We have given you literature, science, art, the refinements of life; you have given us,

1 Dill: Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius, p. 76.

• Campbell: The Puritan in Holland, England, and America, vol. i, p. 72.