ess which,
again, is not constant but increases according to the same law, and so on
indefinitely. We thus see, if we will only retire to our cloisters and
contemplate it, that the proper life of man _as man_ is not life-in-space
like that of animals, but is life-in-time; we thus see that in
distinctively human life, in the life of man as man, the past is present
and the dead survive destined to greet and to bless the unborn
generations: time, bound-up time, is literally of the core and substance
of civilization. So it has been since the beginning of man.

We know that the total progress made in the long course of humanity's
childhood, though it is absolutely great, is relatively small; we know
that, compared with no-civilization, our present civilization is vast and
rich in many ways; we know, however, that, if the time-binding energies of
humanity had been always permitted to operate unhampered by hostile
circumstances, they would long ere now have produced a state of
civilization compared with which our present estate would seem mean,
meagre, savage. For we know that those peculiar energies--the
civilization-producing energies of man--far from being always permitted to
operate according to the laws of their nature, have _never_ been permitted
so to operate, but have always been hampered and are hampered to-day by
hostile circumstances. And, if we reflect, we may know well enough what
the enemies--the hostile circumstances--have been and are. We know that in
the beginning of humanity's childhood--in its babyhood, so to speak--there
was, as already said, no _capital_ whatever to start with--no material
wealth--no spiritual wealth in the form of knowledge of the world or the
nature of man--no existing fruit of dead men's toil--no bound-up
time--nothing but wild and raw material, whose very location, properties
and potencies had all to be discovered; even now, because we have
inherited so much bound-up time and because our imaginations have been so
little disciplined to understand realities, we can scarcely picture to
ourselves the actual conditions of that far-off time of humanity's
babyhood; still less do we realize that present civilization has hardly
begun to be that of enlightened men. We know, moreover, that the
time-binding energies of our remote ancestors were hampered and baulked,
in a measure too vast for our imaginations, by immense geologic and
climatic changes, both sudden and secular, unforeseen and irresist