“And from some ancestral cause you are developed beyond your years in some of our ethical lines. You have reached a humility before the living forces of the universe which is the primary mark of the true governor of the world. How you have attained so rare a virtue amidst the pretentious barbarity of civilisation it is not easy to conceive. There worldliness and arrogance inherit the earth, though there are not signs wanting that they feel the approaching triumph of its true heirs and mask as the meeker virtues. In older times they were not ashamed to show themselves as they really were; for those were the days of glorified highwaymen who seized the throne of the world. Conquest is nothing but successful brigandage on a large scale, veneer it over with diplomacy and historical fame as you will. But for centuries there has been an uneasy feeling abroad that the humble must come to their rights some day; and so the gilded brigands have allied themselves with a religion of the meek and despised, that they may hoodwink mankind into acquiescence in their ancient dishonesty. “We banished all the makings of monarchs, aristocracies, and great men at the purifications of our people. We could see no difference between these and the worst criminals except one of degree. We measured their skulls and brains by the rough, unscientific methods we used to have, and found in them almost no difference from those of murderers and thieves; and comparing them with the skulls of savages and of our own far-back ancestry, we found that in the case of both heroes and criminals the cause of their likeness to each other was their recoil upon the footsteps of the past, and away from the line of human progress which leads towards harmony with the higher laws of the universe.