commercial miracles of the
present century. It is our vigorous growth which makes us the most
interesting and attractive of the modern peoples. For whether men love
us, or whether they hate us, they find it impossible to ignore us,
unless they wish to argue themselves unknown; and the millions who yearn
for freedom and opportunity turn first of all to us.

But observant minds, however much they may love America, however great
their faith in popular government may be, cannot contemplate our actual
condition without a sense of disquietude; for there are aspects of our
social evolution which sadden and depress even the most patriotic and
loyal hearts. It would seem, for instance, that with us, while the
multitude are made comfortable and keen-witted, the individual remains
common-place and weak; so that on all sides people are beginning to ask
themselves what is the good of all this money and machinery if the race
of godlike men is to die out, or indeed if the result is not to be some
nobler and better sort of man than the one with whom we have all along
been familiar. Is not the yearning for divine men inborn? In the heroic
ages such men were worshiped as gods, and one of the calamities of
times of degeneracy is the dying out of faith in the worth of true
manhood caused by the disappearance of superior men. Such men alone are
memorable, and give to history its inspiring and educating power. The
ruins of Athens and Rome, the cathedrals and castles of Europe, uplift
and strengthen the heart, because they bid us reflect what thoughts and
hopes were theirs who thus could build.

How quickly kings and peasants, millionaires and paupers, become a
common, undistinguished crowd! But the hero, the poet, the saint, defy
the ages and remain luminous and separate like stars. They--

"Waged contention with their time's decay,
And of the past are all that cannot pass away."

The soul, which makes man immortal, has alone the power to make him
beneficent and beautiful.

But in this highest kind of man, in whom soul--that is, faith, hope,
love, courage, intellect--is supreme, we Americans, who are on the crest
of the topmost waves of the stream of tendency, are not rich. We have
our popular heroes; but so has every petty people, every tribe its
heroes. The dithyrambic prose in which it is the fashion to celebrate
our conspicuous men has a hollow sound, very like cant. A marvelous
development of wealth and numbers has tak