and of Hume. The industry of Ross, the enthusiastic studies of
Sir William Jones, brought the power of Persian and Indian thought to
bear upon the English mind, and the efforts of all these men seem to
converge in one of the greatest literary monuments of the present
century--_The Sacred Books of the East_.

Thus then we have seen this immortal "energy of the soul" in religion
and thought, as in politics, manifest itself in like aspirations
towards imaginative freedom, the higher freedom and the higher justice,
summed in the phrase "Elargissez Dieu," that man's soul, dowered with
the unfettered use of all its faculties, may set towards the lodestar
of its being, harmony with the Divine, whether it be through freedom in
religious life or in political life or in any other form of life. For
all life, all being, is organic, ceaselessly transformed, ceaselessly
transforming, ceaseless action and interaction, like that vision of
Goethe's of the golden chalices ascending and descending perpetually
between heaven and this dark earth of ours.

Sec. 5. THE TESTIMONY OF THE PAST: A FINAL CONSIDERATION

Before leaving this part of our subject, the testimony of the past,
there is one more question to consider, though with brevity. The great
empires or imperial races of the past, Hellas, Rome, Egypt, Persia,
Islam, represent each a distinct ideal--in each a separate aspect of
the human soul, as the characterizing attribute of the race, seems
incarnate. In Hellas, for example, it is Beauty, +to kalon+; in Rome,
it is Power; in Egypt, Mystery, as embodied in her temples,
half-underground, or in the Sphinx that guards the sepulchres of her
kings; whilst in Persia, Beauty and Aspiration seem to unite in that
mystic curiosity which is the feature at once of her religion, her
architecture, her laws, of Magian ritual and Gnostic theurgy. Other
races possess these qualities, love of beauty, the sense of mystery;
but in Hellas and in Egypt they differentiate the race and all the
sections of the race.

What characteristic, then, common to the whole Teutonic race, does this
Empire of Britain represent? Apart altogether from its individual
ideal, political or religious, what attribute of the race,
distinguishing it from other races, the Hellenic, the Roman, the
Persian, does it eminently possess?

Compare, first of all, the beginnings of the people of England with the
beginnings of the Hellenic people, or better, perhaps, with th