54 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
species which we, in our human conceit, call homo sapiens. But this 
is a ridiculous name for the mass of mankind. It ought to be applied 
only to those very few original and creative minds whom we acknow- 
ledge as men of genius, and without whom the root and stem of all 
our life could never have brought forth its flower. 
XII. With man we come back again to history. And the St. 
Lawrence is historic, so historic, indeed, that the mere names on its 
roll of honour are alone enough to stir the hearts of all who live along 
its shores—Jacques Cartier, Champlain and Laval; Frontenac, Wolfe 
and Montcalm; Lévis, Murray and Carleton; de Salaberry, Brock and 
Tecumseh; the Fathers of Confederation, the South African Contin- 
gents, the Quebec Tercentenary,—these are the men and events whose 
names will go down to posterity, when all the merely material triumphs 
of which we make so much ado will be as totally forgotten as such 
triumphs have always been before, except in so far as they formed 
part of things beyond and above themselves. 
And for those who are thinking about these greater things at all 
bas eee, let them work on in the faith that an appreciative posterity 
will be brought a little nearer by what they are doing now, that this 
“Great River,” this “River of Canada,” will presently give birth to 
the genius who will reveal its soul, and that its people will then divine 
its presences of Nature, see the visions of its everlasting hills, and be 
themselves regenerate in the consecration and the dream of it forever. 
