happens
to strike all in that locality there is a surplus somewhere else, and
that surplus is distributed by railways and steamers and by the
thousand ways that we have to distribute these things; and as a
consequence the agriculturist begins to think and reason, and now for
the first time in the history of the world the agriculturist begins to
stand upon a level with the mechanic and with the man who has
confidence in the laws and facts of nature.

I saw there their musical instruments, from the tomtom (that is a hoop
with two strings of rawhide drawn across it) to the instruments we have
that make the common air blossom with melody. I saw their ideas on
ornaments, from a string of the claws of a wild beast that once
ornamented the dusky bosom of some savage belle, to the rubies and
sapphires and diamonds with which civilization today is familiar. I
saw the books, written upon the shoulder-blades of sheep, upon the bark
of trees, down to the illustrated volumes that are now in the libraries
of the world. I saw their ideas of paintings, from the rude daubs of
yellow mud, to the grand pictures we see in the art galleries of today.
I saw their ideas of sculpture, from a monster god with several legs, a
good many noses, a great many eyes, and one little, contemptible,
brainless head, to the sculpture that we have, where the marble is
clothed with such personality that it seems almost impudence to touch
it without an introduction. I saw all these things, and how men had
gradually improved through the generations that are dead. And I saw at
the same time a row of men's skulls--skulls from the Bushmen of
Australia, skulls from the center of Africa, skulls from the farthest
islands of the Pacific, skulls from this country--from the aborigines
of America, skulls of the Aztecs, up to the best skulls, or many of the
best of the last generation; and I noticed there was the same
difference between the skulls as between the products of the skulls,
the same between that skull and that, as between the dugout and the
man-of-war, as between the dugout and the steamship, as between the
tomtom and an opera of Verdi, as between those ancient agricultural
implements and ours, as between that yellow daub and that landscape, as
between that stone god and a statue of today; and I said to myself,
"This is a question of intellectual development; this is a question of
brain." The man has advanced just in proportion as he has mingled his
tho