I have dwelt on these points merely because it is well to emphasize in
the most emphatic fashion the fact that in many respects there is a
complete lack of analogy between the civilization of to-day and the
only other civilization in any way comparable to it, that of the
ancient Græco-Roman lands. There are, of course, many points in which
the analogy is close, and in some of these points the resemblances
are as ominous as they are striking. But most striking of all is the
fact that in point of physical extent, of wide diversity of interest,
and of extreme velocity of movement, the present civilization can be
compared to nothing that has ever gone before. It is now literally a
world movement, and the movement is growing ever more rapid and is
ever reaching into new fields. Any considerable influence exerted at
one point is certain to be felt with greater or less effect at almost
every other point. Every path of activity open to the human intellect
is followed with an eagerness and success never hitherto dreamed of.
We have established complete liberty of conscience, and, in
consequence, a complete liberty for mental activity. All free and
daring souls have before them a well-nigh limitless opening for
endeavor of any kind.
Hitherto every civilization that has arisen has been able to develop
only a comparatively few activities; that is, its field of endeavor
has been limited in kind as well as in locality. There have, of
course, been great movements, but they were of practically only one
form of activity; and although usually this set in motion other kinds
of activities, such was not always the case. The great religious
movements have been the pre-eminent examples of this type. But they
are not the only ones. Such peoples as the Mongols and the
Phoenicians, at almost opposite poles of cultivation, have represented
movements in which one element, military or commercial, so
overshadowed all other elements that the movement died out chiefly
because it was one-sided. The extraordinary outburst of activity among
the Mongols of the thirteenth century was almost purely a military
movement, without even any great administrative side; and it was
therefore well-nigh purely a movement of destruction. The individual
prowess and hardihood of the Mongols, and the perfection of their
military organization, rendered their armies incomparably superior to
those of any European, or any other Asiatic, power of that day. They
conquered from the Yellow Sea to the Persian Gulf and the Adriatic;
they seized the Imperial throne of China; they slew the Caliph in
Bagdad; they founded dynasties in India. The fanaticism of
Christianity and the fanaticism of Mohammedanism were alike powerless
against them. The valor of the bravest fighting men in Europe was
impotent to check them. They trampled Russia into bloody mire beneath
the hoofs of their horses; they drew red furrows of destruction across
Poland and Hungary; they overthrew with ease any force from western
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