Of home influences it is hardly necessary to speak. The blessing of a wise and good mother; the disaster of an ignorant, vicious, or neglectful mother call for no reminder. The influence of husbands and wives upon each other; the transformation wrought by a fortunate or unfortunate love passion in the life of a woman or a man are equally obvious and well understood. So with friendship: most men have known at least one friend whose counsel, conversation, or example has affected the entire current of their thoughts--perhaps has changed the direction of their life. These instances being noted, it remains for us only to remember that the influence of a wife, a lover, a mother, or a friend may be as powerful for evil as for good. But there are other personal influences as potent, but not so generally nor so wisely recognised. Such are the influences of good or bad books, and of great leaders and teachers--good and bad. What tremendous powers over the lives and thoughts of millions were wielded by such teachers as Confucius, Buddha, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Jesus Christ. How vast a difference was wrought amongst the masses of humanity by Caesar, Mahomet, Alexander, Oliver Cromwell. Who can estimate the importance to the world of Copernicus, Galileo; Luther, Calvin, Bacon, Darwin; of Rousseau, Wycliffe, Tyndall, Marx, Homer, Harvey, Watt, Caxton, and Stephenson? Which of us can assess his debt to such men as Shakespeare, Dante, Shelley, Dickens, and Carlyle? Then consider our account with the scientists, priests, and lawgivers of Babylon and Egypt. Recall the benefits conferred upon us by the men who invented written language; the wheel, the file, the plough. Think of all the laborious and gradual building up of the arts, the ethics, the sciences of the world. The making of architecture, mathematics, sculpture, painting, agriculture, working in wood or metals; the evolution of literature and music, the invention and improvement of the many decencies, courtesies, and utilities of life; from the first wearing of loin cloths, the fashioning of flint axes, to the steel pen, the use of chloroform, and the custom of raising one's hat to a lady. All the arts and crafts; the ethics, sciences, and laws; the tools, arms, grammars; the literatures, dramas, and newspapers; the conveniences and luxuries, the morals and the learning--all that goes to the making of modern civilization we owe to the genius, the industry, and the humanity of countless men and women whom we have never seen. Into all the wealth of knowledge and freedom, of wisdom and virtue they created and bequeathed, we are born, as we are born to the light and the air. But for the labours and the sacrifices of the workers, fighters, and thinkers of the past we were shorn of all our pride and power, and reduced below the social, intellectual, and moral level of the Australian Bushmen.