Here in the United States we have been somewhat amazingly ignorant of our brother Americans of Mexico and of South America. Our ignorance has been so complete as to have the usual result of quite intolerant bigotry with regard to the significance of what was being done in these Spanish-American countries. A distinguished ex-president of one of our American universities said in his autobiography, that a favorite maxim of his for his own guidance was, "The man I don't like is the man I don't know." If we only know enough about people, we always find out quite enough about them that is admirable to make us like them. Whenever we are tempted to conclude that somebody is hopelessly insignificant then what we need to correct is our judgment by better knowledge of them. For most Americans, for we have arrogated to ourselves the title of Americans to the exclusion of any possible share {300} in it of our South American brethren, Spanish America has been so hopelessly backward, so out of all comparison with ourselves, as to be quite undeserving of our notice unless it be for profound deprecation. Fortunately for us in recent years our knowledge of Spanish America has become larger and deeper and more genuine, and as a consequence there has been less assumption of knowledge founded on ignorance. Every gain in knowledge of Spanish America has raised Spanish America and her peoples in our estimation. Not long since at a public dinner the president of a great American university said, "We have only just discovered Spanish America." This is literally true. We have thought that we knew much about it, and that that much showed us how little deserving of our attention was Spanish America, while all the while a precious mine of information with regard to the beginnings of the history of education, of literature, of culture, nay, even of physical science on this continent, remained to be studied in these countries and not our own. Our scholars are now engaged in bringing together the materials out of which a real history of Spanish America can be constructed for their fellow-Americans of the North, and their surprise when it is placed before them is likely to be supreme. In the meantime there are some phases of this information that, I think, it will be interesting to bring together for you. {301}