, 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; and, caring nought for superior numbers--and saying with
German Alaric when the Romans boasted of their numbers, 'The thicker the
hay the easier it is mowed--struck one brave blow at the huge inflated
wind-bag--as Cyrus and his handful of Persians struck at the Medes; as
Alexander and his handful of Greeks struck afterwards at the
Persians--and behold, it collapsed upon the spot. And then the victors
took the place of the conquered; and became in their turn an aristocracy,
and then a despotism; and in their turn rotted down and perished. And so
the vicious circle repeated itself, age after age, from Egypt and Assyria
to Mexico and Peru.

And therefore, we, free peoples as we are, have need to watch, and
sternly watch, ourselves. Equality of some kind or other is, as I said,
our natural and seemingly inevitable goal. But which equality? For
there are two--a true one and a false; a noble and a base; a healthful
and a ruinous. There is the truly divine equality, and there is the
brute equality of sheep and oxen, and of flies and worms. There is the
equality which is founded on mutual envy. The equality which respects
others, and the equality which asserts itself. The equality which longs
to raise all alike, and the equality which desires to pull down all
alike. The equality which says--Thou art as good as I, and it may be
better too, in the sight of God. And the equality which says--I am as
good as thou, and will therefore see if I cannot master thee.

Side by side, in the heart of every free man, and every free people, are
the two instincts struggling for the mastery, called by the same name,
but bearing the same relation to each other as Marsyas to Apollo, the
Satyr to the God. Marsyas and Apollo, the base and the noble, are, as in
the old Greek legend, contending for the prize. And the prize is no less
an one than all free people of this planet.

In proportion as that nobler idea conquers, and men unite in the equality
of mutual respec