“For yourself he has pleaded, and, though our wise men have recognised that you are thousands of years in the rear of our civilisation, and have confirmed their recognition by scientific measurement of the forces and elements in you, they have consented to let you remain and to take your education in hand. It seems an almost impossible task to contract thousands of years into tens; but they do not despair; for our system of education has already accomplished this for children born amongst us, and you have a nature peculiarly open to our educational influences. You have first of all the passion for progress as strongly in you as in any of ourselves; and this is the prime essential of our ethics and civilisation; to it all other passions must yield; from it flows all that subdues the material world and gives dominance to the spirit, and makes for righteousness. But with it often go pride and arrogance. In you was found strongly developed the desire to treat all good men as equals, whatever difference of capacity or position or possessions might seem to separate them from you. Had you had even the slightest tinge of contemptuousness or hauteur in you, you would have been sternly repelled. To contemn is the mark of an incurably savage nature, a nature incapable of true knowledge of itself and of its relations to life. From these two desires come purity of thought and life, the love of peace, respect for the rights of others and reverence for what is fine in their personality, and absolute transparency of nature. This last we ever take to be the shortest and truest test of a progressive character, the love of truth and simplicity, complete harmony of word and act with the inmost thought. As long as a man or a nation lacks this, there can be no real advance; what seems advance is but a mirage of fame or glory. Accuracy of vision and of prevision is the first condition of true progress. It was one of the first things that Noola saw in you, and the first reason he urged for your retention; you had no desire to conceal your thoughts, so closely did they tally with your life; you had an overwhelming passion for truth and for the truthful.