These ideas constituted a new factor of Latin development. France is the modern heir of the genius of Greece and Rome, and in imitating her, even to excess, Ibero-Americans have assimilated the essential elements of the antique culture. We find in the Gallic spirit the sense of taste and harmony, the _lucidus ordo_ of the classics; the love of general ideas, of universal principles, of the rights of man, {287} and a hatred of the mists of the North and the too violent light of the South; rationalism, logical vigour, emotion in the presence of beauty, and the cult of grace. France has been the teacher of social life and letters to the American democracies; her influence is already of no recent date. Voltaire and Rousseau were the theorists of the revolutionary period; Lamartine taught "lyrism" and romantic melancholy; Benjamin-Constant, the theory of politics, and Verlaine the lamentations of decadence. Either indirectly, through the influence of the thought and literature of Spain and Portugal, or directly, these republics have lived by the light of French ideas. Thus a general current of thought has arisen on the American continent which is not merely Iberian, but also French and Roman. France has effected a spiritual conquest of these democracies, and has created a new variety of the Latin spirit. This Latin spirit is not a thing apart; it is formed of characteristics common to all the Mediterranean peoples. French, Greeks, Italians, Portuguese, and Spaniards find therein the fundamental elements of their national genius, just as in antiquity the Greek women found in Helen the reflection of their own beauty. To this spiritual synthesis Spain contributes her idealism; Italy, the paganism of her children and the eternal suggestion of her marbles; France, her harmonious education. In the Iberian democracies an inferior Latinity, a Latinity of the decadence prevails; verbal abundance, inflated rhetoric, oratorical exaggeration, just as in Roman Spain. The qualities and defects of the classic spirit are revealed in American life; the persistent idealism, which often disdains the conquests of utility; the ideas of humanity and equality, of universality, despite racial variety; the cult of form; the Latin instability and vivacity; the faith in pure {288} ideas and political dogmas: all are to be found in these lands oversea, together with the brilliant and superficial intelligence, the Jacobinism, and the oratorical facility. Enthusiasm, sociability, and optimism are also American qualities.