tus
beheld us, with respect and awe, among our German forests, and saw in us
the future masters of the Roman Empire.

Yes, it is very sad, the past history of mankind. But shall we despise
those who went before us, and on whose accumulated labours we now stand?

Shall we not reverence our spiritual ancestors? Shall we not show our
reverence by copying them, at least whenever, as in those old Persians,
we see in them manliness and truthfulness, hatred of idolatries, and
devotion to the God of light and life and good? And shall we not feel
pity, instead of contempt, for their ruder forms of government, their
ignorances, excesses, failures--so excusable in men who, with little or
no previous teaching, were trying to solve for themselves for the first
time the deepest social and political problems of humanity.

Yes, those old despotisms we trust are dead, and never to revive. But
their corpses are the corpses, not of our enemies, but of our friends and
predecessors, slain in the world-old fight of Ormuzd against
Ahriman--light against darkness, order against disorder. Confusedly they
fought, and sometimes ill: but their corpses piled the breach and filled
the trench for us, and over their corpses we step on to what should be to
us an easy victory--what may be to us, yet, a shameful ruin.

For if we be, as we are wont to boast, the salt of the earth and the
light of the world, what if the salt should lose its savour? What if the
light which is in us should become darkness? For myself, when I look
upon the responsibilities of the free nations of modern times, so far
from boasting of that liberty in which I delight--and to keep which I
freely, too, could die--I rather say, in fear and trembling, God help us
on whom He has laid so heavy a burden as to make us free; responsible,
each individual of us, not only to ourselves, but to Him and all mankind.
For if we fall we shall fall I know not whither, and I dare not think.

How those old despotisms, the mighty empires of old time, fell, we know,
and we can easily explain. Corrupt, luxurious, effeminate, eaten out by
universal selfishness and mutual fear, they had at last no organic
coherence. The moral anarchy within showed through, at last burst
through, the painted skin of prescriptive order which held them together.
Some braver and abler, and usually more virtuous people, often some
little, hardy, homely mountain tribe, saw that the fruit was ripe for
gathering; an