s apt to be an indirect influence; and in the advanced states
the mere suspicion that the wealth of public men is obtained or added
to as an incident of their public careers will bar them from public
life. Speaking 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,