Scandinavians, are among the best elements in the American population, and have produced men of the highest distinction. But the average level among them of versatile aptitude and of intellectual culture is slightly below that of the native Americans. Now, the poorer sections are in most countries, though of course not always to the same extent, somewhat inferior in physical as well as in mental quality, and more prone to suffer from that greatest hindrance to physical improvement, the abuse of alcoholic drinks. We come next to another form of the increase of human resources, the accumulation of knowledge, and of what may be called intellectual culture and capacity, for it is convenient to distinguish these two latter from knowledge. [Illustration: PIONEERS OF MODERN CIVILISATION The discovery of precious metals is a great factor in progress. Seekers after gold are chief among the pioneers who help to carry civilisation into new lands. ] [Sidenote: Inventions Mean Progress] In knowledge there has been an advance, not merely a tolerably steady and constant advance, but one which has gone on with a sort of geometrical progression, moving the faster the nearer we come to our own time. Whatever may have befallen in the prehistoric darkness, history knows of only one notable arrest or setback in the onward march--that which marks the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries of the Christian era. Even this set-back was practically confined to Southern and Western Europe, and affected only certain departments of knowledge. It did not, save, perhaps, as regards a few artistic processes, extinguish that extremely important part of the previously accumulated resources of mankind which consisted in the knowledge of inventions. It is in respect of inventions, especially mechanical and physical or chemical inventions, that the accumulation of knowledge has been most noteworthy and most easy to appreciate.