2 q8 RECOLLECTIONS OF FORTY YEARS. 



advanced civilisation of the inhabited worlds by the 

 criterion as to whether their isthmuses were pierced 

 or not. 



" For a planet is only ripe for progress when all its 

 inhabited parts have reached that stage of close re- 

 lationship which constitutes a living organism, so that 

 no one part can enjoy, suffer, or act without the other 

 parts feeling in harmony. We have reached that 

 critical stage in the history of our own planet. 

 Formerly, China, Japan, India, and America might 

 have been convulsed by revolution without Europe so 

 much as knowing of it. For long centuries the Atlantic 

 divided the habitable globe into two parts as distinct 

 one from the other as if they were two different worlds. 

 Now, the stock exchanges of Paris and London are 

 affected by what occurs at Pekin, in the Congo, in 

 Kordofan, or in California ; there are but few dead 

 parts in the body of humanity. The electric telegraph 

 and the telephone have annihilated distance as regards 

 the things of the mind, while railways and steam navi- 

 gation have multiplied tenfold the facilities of bodily 

 movement. It was inevitable, therefore, that our 

 century should regard as an essential part of its work 

 the removal of the obstacles to rapid communication. 

 It was impossible surely that the generation which 

 had tunnelled the Mont Cenis and the St. Gothard 

 should be arrested by a few sandbanks or reefs of 

 rock at Suez, Corinth, and Panama ! 



"You, sir, have been the chosen artisan for this 



