This is the vital problem which I have posed and tried to dissect in the dialogue which my travels in America inspired me to write: the problem treated in the speeches and discussions of the many characters, European and American, who figure in that dialogue. It may seem strange, at first sight, that a discussion of the Old World and the New, in which the contending parties propose to prove which is superior to the other, should end in this second problem, apparently so unlike the first; whether it is necessary or not to place a limit on the unbridled activity and immoderate desires of our times. Anyone who has read the present series of essays, however, will be less likely to find this conclusion singular and obscure. I have repeatedly said, and tried to prove, that there is too great a tendency on both sides of the Atlantic to find an antagonism between Europe and America. If certain tendencies are stronger in one of the two continents, and weaker in the other, these are differences of quantity, not of quality. America is becoming Europeanised, and Europe Americanised. However little reflection and cool reasoning the European may bring to his abuse of America on the score of its excessive zeal in the production of riches, or the American to his abuse of Europe on account of the scanty remains of the spirit of tradition and conservatism in the Old World, each will recognise that he is at the same time inveighing against his own continent. In fact, Europe applies herself with no less zeal than America to the production of greater wealth; and America is no less anxious than Europe to enjoy the advantages which may even now accrue to the world from the spirit of tradition.