n those days, was
enormously and abnormally capacious and retentive, but there was no
appreciation of humanity. Few lessons from the experiences of others
were possible, because the mind was filled with merely tribal legends.
What was called early civilization was only relatively splendid. There
was unsurpassed poetry but no science, ample brawn but diminutive brain,
much passion but little love. Out of the darkness of the past the stream
of history, very narrow and shallow at first, has emerged and steadily
expanded and deepened. Men are now equally intense but far clearer in
vision, nobler in purpose, and purer in character. Their laws year by
year have become more humane, their sympathies less contracted, their
institutions more civilized. Nature's secret drawers have been unlocked.
We are sometimes told that science has added much to the store of man's
knowledge but nothing to the strength of his mind or the nobility of his
character. That is a serious mistake. With the enlarged visions of the
universe, with clearer conceptions of our cosmic relations, with the
national neighborliness which is now a necessity, the capacity and the
quality of the soul must change. Nay, it has already changed, for we
inhabit the same lands over which savages formerly roamed, and we find
in the earth and air what they never found; and when we look up into the
great wide sky and say, "The Heavens declare the glory of God," we are
not thinking of a tribal Deity, or a partial, and more or less
passionate, monarch enthroned in the midst of his splendors, but of the
King Eternal, immortal, invisible. Knowledge tends to enlarge the mind
by which it is acquired. All faculties are strengthened by use.

History has moved along a bloody pathway, or, to revert to the figure of
a stream, is indeed a river of "tears and blood." The horrors of the
process by which the race has been lifted can hardly be exaggerated. I
do not forget them while I put stronger emphasis on the fact that the
outcome of all the struggle of individuals, the conflict of classes, and
the wars of nations has been a nobler and purer quality of soul,--not
less heroic but more sacrificial, not less strong but far more virtuous.

The growth of the individual soul is mirrored in the progress of the
race. When we have learned to read aright the history of the world, we
are informed as to the interior forces which have made civilization.
Events are expressions of thoughts; institutio