In fact, we must not forget, if we wish to realise what a miracle the civilisation of machinery has succeeded in accomplishing in the New World, how slow and difficult was the expansion of mankind over the world up to the end of the eighteenth century, that is, during a period when men worked with their hands and travelled over their planet on their own legs, or on those of animals little swifter than themselves. The great plains acted as so many great barriers in the way of men’s occupation of the land, because men lost their way in them. Consequently men tended to settle on little tracts of land, in such a way as to be near one another, to be able to communicate easily with one another, and to exchange their products. Everybody knows how slow has been in Europe the advance of civilisation from south to north; how many centuries were required for the passage of the Alps and expansion into Gaul, how many for the crossing of the Rhine and extension as far as the Elbe, and again for the passage of the Elbe and the advance towards the Vistula and the great plains of Eastern Europe. In America itself—in the South as well as in the North—up to the end of the eighteenth century, the progress of population and civilisation was very slow and difficult. In the twentieth century, on the other hand, a prodigy occurred, thanks to steam-engines and all the other machines of which the steam-engine is the parent. With these machines, men can exploit more rapidly and thoroughly all the wealth of the earth, and with the railways can export the wealth produced, even from the most remote and buried regions, which thus can be peopled and exploited. Civilisation, following the railway-lines, and armed with fire and machines, in little more than fifty years extended from the Atlantic to the Pacific, crossing and occupying, however summarily, the immense territories of the interior, and binding together with a network of communications and interests, cities, climates, and territories without number from east to west, from north to south. But machinery is an inanimate instrument, only to be imbued with creative force by the thought and will of man. In consequence, this miracle of history would not have come about if a bold and energetic people had not multiplied machines with extraordinary rapidity over the whole immensity of their territory; if they had not subordinated to this supreme end every other good, æsthetic beauty, the preservation of traditions, the purity of the national spirit, and even the conveniences of life which wealth can give. American progress is then a transcendent and mystical idea which inflames America with passion and impels it to accomplish the new and rapid conquest of its own territory. And logic wastes its time looking for and laying bare contradictions in it savouring of the absurd. Doubtless, to work with frenzied zeal at creating riches in order to be unable to enjoy them is an absurdity if judged in the light of the