PERFECTIBILITY OF MAN. 181 



Such changes are rapidly going on under our 

 eyes. They all tend, directly or indirectly, to the 

 greater unity of mankind to the assimilation of lan- 

 guages, modes of government, knowledge and arts, 

 and the habits of personal and social life, among 

 peoples widely separated though all prior ages. 

 Taking fair measure of time into the account (and of 

 the future duration of time on the earth we are as 

 ignorant as of the past), we may securely affirm that 

 the total aspect of human life will be altered over the 

 globe. Important questions arise how far this assimi- 

 lation of races over the globe may not, for a time at 

 least, lower the human scale in some of its attributes. 

 Look at the changes going on at this time in the an- 

 cient empires of India, China, Egypt, and Japan at 

 the rapid, perhaps precocious, growth of populous 

 communities transplanted from the Old World to the 

 prairies and forests of the Indians in North America, 

 or to the lands of the ruder savages of Australia, both 

 the destined centres of a new and wide civilisation. It 

 is a revolution of centuries accomplished within the 

 existing generation of man. The slave-trade has 

 been happily displaced by a trade in free emigrants, 

 seeking to find in these new regions more space and 

 scope than the Old World can afford them. Glancing 

 on the globe at the position and petty surface of our 

 own island, it may well seem marvellous that this 

 single nation (the ultimi orbis Britanni) should have 

 played so dominant a part in the mighty changes now 

 in progress. Milton speaks of ' England's precedence 

 in teaching nations how to live.' If the phrase were 

 true for his time, how much more is it for our own ! 



