BARBARISM, CULTURE, EMPIRE, UNION 431 



to avail more through his friends than through his own right arm. The 

 clasp of the hand will outlive the blow; for there is the strength of 

 two behind every grasp, and of but one behind any blow that evokes it. 



A play on French words may serve to fix in mind the necessary 

 evanescence of empire. We may fancy that the word derives from the 

 verb empirer, signifying to deteriorate. By this burlesque etymolog}'' 

 its root-meaning comes to be that of going from bad to worse; and an 

 empire becomes accordingly that form of international organization 

 which is foredoomed to decline and fall. 



Even the short span of years which recorded history has yet covered 

 brings ample evidence in support of this definition. Either external 

 coalitions to overthrow them or internal coalitions to reject their yoke 

 have ended, or threaten to end, nearly every known empire. The 

 British Empire which still stands and even shows signs of permanence, 

 has learned the lesson of union, and bids fair to become an empire in 

 its name alone. British imperialism was once, as Professor Cramb has 

 told us, the will to give all men under British sway an English mind, 

 in the spirit of the boast of Alexander the Great : " I will make all men 

 Hellenes." But the instruction of England in the larger art of govern- 

 ment, begun in North America, has been continued since, and her im- 

 perial aim is fast becoming a will to live with other men and let them 

 live. The British Empire, if it last, will one day be what the Seven 

 Seas choose to make of it, not what England alone chooses to make of 

 it. The Irish mind, the Boer mind, the Hindu mind, will share with 

 others in the process. The United States have of late been tempted to 

 forget the lesson they themselves taught; but Cuba, Mexico and the 

 Philippines stand as witnesses that for all our growth in power, we 

 still hold fast to the doctrines of our Declaration of Independence. 

 With a giant's strength we have twice and even thrice refused to use 

 it like a giant. Bom a Union, we are engaged in laying the founda- 

 tions of other unions. It is possible to conceive of but one more 

 august political structure than these — one in which every sovereign 

 people in the world should contribute each its own mind to a union 

 which should ensure the perpetual development of the minds of all. 



The conclusion of the w^hole matter may be put into modern 

 American. Empire is the child of the barbarism out of which the world 

 tends; culture the parent of the union into which the world tends. 

 There is no middle term; for it is always barbarism to claim "I am 

 It " ; and culture always answers : " There are others." 



