records of the arts and sciences of
ancient Assyria. Under the ash heaps of a forgotten age, in Cyprus,
Cesnola finds the only known vestiges of a primitive civilization,
reaching far back into the domain of mythology. Thanks to the
destroyers of Troy and Mycenae, and the protective care of temporary
oblivion, Schliemann is now able to verify tradition and lay before an
astonished and delighted world numerous precious relics of heroic ages
hitherto remembered only in song.

Who can estimate the value of these and similar findings to us--the
value of the revelations they bring of man's condition in those remote
ages? Who can say how many or how few the ages will be ere the time
comes when the antiquaries of the future will be rejoicing over
equally fragmentary vestiges of the doings and possessions of our day?

On the other hand, who can estimate the value of the knowledge lost
beyond hope of recovery, or the checks to human progress experienced,
in the repeated wiping out, so to speak, of the higher races and the
civilizations they embodied? And who can say that similar disasters
may not come again and again to humanity?

Suppose a pestilence peculiarly fatal to the white race should fall
upon the world to-day, crippling, perhaps exterminating, the now
dominant civilized nations; how long would the material elements of
our science and art or general culture remain with power to enlighten
the barbarous tribes that would inherit the earth? Human progress has
more than once been set back for centuries by such natural or
unnatural causes, leaving the sites of once splendid civilizations to
be overrun with barbaric hordes knowing nothing of the better times
that went before.

Suppose, again, that, by one of those geologic changes so numerous in
the history of our unstable globe, the existing continents should sink
a thousand feet. Every center of modern civilization would be
submerged. The great social and political organizations of humanity
would be broken up, and in the wreck of nations that would ensue very
little of the glory and culture of the race could survive. The earth
is dotted with vestiges of lost and forgotten empires. Can we
reasonably assume, in the face of such facts, that the nations of
to-day are immortal?

The question is: Shall we continue to trust to chance, as all other
civilizations have, for the preservation of the conquests we have made
among the forces and secrets of nature; or shall we do so