s of the world. No lover of America can
help thinking it undesirable that any one should be able to say of us
with truth, what Locke has said, "The Americans are not all born with
worse understandings than the Europeans, though we see none of them have
such reaches in the arts and sciences." It is our aim to create the
highest civilization; but the highest civilization is favorable to the
highest life, which implies and requires more than the possession of
material things. Conduct is necessary, knowledge is necessary, beauty is
necessary, manners are necessary, and a civilized people must develop
life in all these directions, and as far as such a thing is possible,
harmoniously. Whoever excels in conduct, or in knowledge, or in a sense
for the beautiful, or in manners, helps to raise the standard of
living,--helps to give worth, dignity, charm, and refinement to life. It
is hard to take interest in a people who have no profound thinkers, no
great artists, no accomplished scholars, for only such men can lift a
people above the provincial spirit, and bring them into conscious
relationship with former ages and the wide world. The rule of the people
looks to something higher than opportunity for every man to have food
and a home; to something more than putting a church, a school, and a
newspaper at every man's door. Saints and heroes, philosophers and
poets, are a people's glory. They give us nobler loves, higher thoughts,
diviner aims. They show us how like a god man may become; and political
and social institutions which make saints and heroes, philosophers and
poets, impossible, can have but inferior value. And there is some
radical wrong where the noblest manhood and womanhood are not
appreciated and reverenced. Not to recognize genuine worth is the mark
of a superficial and vulgar character. The servile spirit has no
conception of the heroic nature; and they who measure life by material
standards, do not perceive the infinite which is in man and which makes
him godlike. A few only in any age or nation love the best, follow after
ideal aims; but when these few are wanting, all life becomes
common-place, and the millions pass from the cradle to the grave and
leave no lasting impression upon the world.

The practical turn of mind which finds expression in our commercial and
industrial achievements, makes itself felt also in our intellectual
activity, and those among us who have knowledge and power of utterance
are expecte