1906.] 



JORDAN— THE HUMAN HARVEST. 59 



these plowmen of the Tiber and the Apennines felt themselves fully 

 comptent and adequate. " Vir," they called themselves in their own 

 tongue, and virile, virilis, men like them are called to this day. It 

 was the weakling and the slave who was crowded to the wall ; the 

 man of courage begat descendents. In each generation and from 

 generation to generation the human harvest was good. And the 

 g'reat wise king who ruled them ; but here my story halts — for 

 there was no king. There could be none. For it was written, men 

 fit to be called men, men who are Vires, " are too self-willed, too 

 independent, and too self-centred to be ruled by anybody but them- 

 selves." Kings are for weaklings, not for men. Men free-born 

 control their own destinies. " The fault is not in our stars, but in 

 ourselves that we are underlings." For it was later said of these 

 same days : " there was a Brutus once, who would have brooked the 

 Eternal Devil to take his seat in Rome, as easily as a king." And 

 so there was no king to cherish and control these men his subjects. 

 The spirit of freedom was the only ruler they knew, and this spirit 

 l^eing herself metaphoric called to her aid the four great genii which 

 create and recreate nations. Variation was ever at work, while 

 lieredity held fast all that she developed. Segregation in her moun- 

 tain fastnesses held the world away, and selection chose the best 

 and for the best purposes, casting aside the weakly, and the slave, 

 holding the man for the man's work, and ever the man's work was 

 at home, building the cities, subduing the forests, draining the 

 marshes, adjusting the customs and statutes, preparing for the new 

 generations. So the men begat sons of men after their own fashion, 

 and the men of strength and courage were ever dominant. The 

 Spirit of Freedom was a wise master, cares wisely for all that he 

 controls. 



So in the early days, when Romans were men, when Rome was 

 small, without glory, without riches, without colonies and without 

 slaves, these were the days of Roman greatness. 



Then the Spirit of Freedom little by little gave way to the Spirit 

 of Domination. Conscious of power, men sought to exercise it, not 

 on themselves but on one another. Little by little, this meant band- 

 ing together, aggression, suppression, plunder, struggle, glorv, and 



