Apeil 6, 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



531 



changed and unchanging in its own lands, 

 thrown into a society whose highest ambi- 

 tion is change. The Jew, the Levantine, 

 the Mongolian; these are all here in a 

 countless host with all their virtues and all 

 their faults. In seinen Gottern malt sich 

 der Menscli. Their religion is their all; 

 their jurisprudence, their politics, their 

 morals. If they lose their awe, their trust, 

 their national cult, their lords of battle, 

 their great prophets — what do we give 

 them instead, bread or a stone? Here is 

 not only the ancient world, but the middle 

 age; a political feudalism, a social hier- 

 archy, almost as perfect as those of the 

 thirteenth century; a medieval church in 

 unsurpassed majesty, festivals of an age- 

 worn creed and system that vie with our 

 national holidays and even surpass them in 

 the interest of the celebrants. And thirdly, 

 in regard to numbers at least, we have to 

 search with a lantern for the Dutchman, 

 the Huguenot, and the Briton, English, 

 Scotch or Irish, who were once in control 

 of this metropolis. But they can be found, 

 few as they are; they are here and in 

 power; responsible still for the moral 

 standards which guide this civic life; re- 

 sponsible too for the immorality that 

 seethes beneath the surface of commercial 

 life, responsible, let us hope, for the lance 

 and probe which open the periodic sores of 

 both to the healing light of day and airs of 

 heaven. 



How are we to perform our role, to do 

 our imperative duty, in the midst of this 

 amazing congeries of unrelated parts? 

 How are we to reap the rich harvest which 

 may be garnered for ourselves and for hu- 

 manity in this the most fertile social field 

 ever enclosed? The mixed races of the 

 world have been its conquerors. "What 

 Greece devised, Rome, that imperial com- 

 pound of Latin, Celtic, German and Ori- 

 ental ingredients, imposed by force on the 

 then known world. Another mixed race. 



the Turks, overwhelmed Byzantium; and 

 in the Western Empire, the blend of Angles, 

 Saxons, Jutes, Danes and Celts, a mingled 

 drift flung afar on the rocky confines of 

 Gaul and Britain, established its sway, dis- 

 seminating the heritage of Rome, Christian 

 and Pagan, to the ends of the earth. So 

 we, in turn, a still more wondrous con- 

 glomerate of all peoples, nations and lan- 

 guages that dwell upon the earth, may 

 grasp a still larger inheritance, and in our 

 turn transmit it to all mankind ; the United 

 States of the world. 



In Lessing's great dialogue on free-ma- 

 sonry, he shows how every individual man 

 has secrets and aspirations which he can not 

 reveal, even if he would. Those on which 

 he touches are largely political and belong 

 fortunately to history. But, for a familiar 

 example, here is the mystery of our very 

 being. Do we really exist or are we phan- 

 tasms? We can prove nothing absolutely, 

 one way or another ; but for all that we do 

 exist, we do live and think; and we behave 

 according to that conviction. Where is the 

 proof of sense-perception? Yet we do per- 

 ceive; and behave accordingly. What can 

 we know? Nothing absolutely, perhaps, 

 but something, even though relatively, 

 something actually, because we conduct 

 ourselves according to convictions based on 

 reality, as the test of action proves. Man 

 can not live without political organization, 

 yet it is the bloody struggles of states that 

 destroy men, physically and morally, as 

 does no other cause. We have discarded 

 the doctrine of races as unscientific; yet 

 race-struggle is an uppermost question in 

 the mind of every serious man. By an- 

 alogy with these instances, university theo- 

 ries and ideals reduce themselves when 

 carefully considered to matters of conduct, 

 to an attitude of mind and a course of be- 

 havior. Theories and ideals, much vaunted 

 as they are, seem very unreal and elusive ; 

 morals are concrete and vitally important. 



