Moral ideals show very important differences, chiefly in the direction of the elevation of humility, meekness, sympathy, forgiveness and self-sacrifice, and the extraordinary advance in the conception of the right of individual freedom. In ancient times the individual citizen had no rights as against the State;[170] now we demand not only freedom in matters of profession and business, as against caste restrictions, but intellectual, moral and religious liberty. The differences between ancient and modern religion are very extraordinary in many ways. For the present we need only note the one far-reaching distinction, that to the ancients religion was a _political duty_, which the citizen was bound to fulfil, and a _civic privilege_, which only those in whose veins ran the sacred blood of the community could share;[171] while modern religion is the loftiest activity of the human spirit, as far transcending the narrow limits of the State as it does the petty distinctions of race and blood. The differences, then, between ancient and modern life are not accidental but essential. A second thing to be noticed is the altogether unexampled vitality and pervasiveness of modern civilization. During the nineteenth century alone, while the population of the rest of the world remained nearly stationary, the actual numbers of the European peoples rose from 170,000,000 to 500,000,000.[172] Here is physical life on a gigantic scale. Let readers think, next, of the extraordinary advances made during the nineteenth century in every province of natural science, from mathematics and physics up through the biological sciences to psychology and the science of religion, the swift upward progress made in literary, historical and philosophical method, and the innumerable inventions that have been produced for facilitating every form of human activity. Are not these facts evidence of an amazing store of intellectual vitality in the society of the West? Think also of the buoyancy, the hope, the youthful delight in action, the glance into the future, which characterize the progressive peoples of Europe and America. Colonization, on the other hand, exploration, missions, world-wide commerce, domination over other races, whether you call them bad or good, are incontestable proofs of energy, physical, moral and intellectual. Further, these forms of vital force are clearly of the greatest practical importance in the world. In the process of natural selection which, whether we like it or not, is ceaselessly being carried on among the races of mankind, the possession of such energy is one of the crucial factors in the struggle. But this civilization has also an altogether unique power of entering into other civilizations and working revolutionary changes there: its pervasiveness is almost as remarkable as its vitality. We need only point to India and Japan to-day for proof of this.