The stage of civilization has never yet advanced beyond the natural capacity and capability of the people at any time. Whatever stage has been reached in the world's progress in the past, it was in harmony and corresponded with the degree of nervous culture that had been attained. And just in proportion as the senses were developed, intelligence and understanding advanced. The senses are the sole originators of ideas. The collective experience and training of these senses becomes the standard by which we may judge the height of knowledge any class of people may have reached. Nations kept pace with one another, copying from one another, imitating or modifying or improving those things and conditions with which they were brought in contact, whether by travel, commercial intercourse, or war. All these means of communication served as a means of exchanging ideas, of adopting, rejecting, or improving whatever degree of civilization had been attained. At no time has any individual, community, or nation been especially favored by any supernatural endowment, influence, or miraculous contribution towards their advancement. But each has always been improved by the force, energy, power, of some individual or individuals whose training and education has been such as to fit him or them to concentrate and carry out the ideas that have perhaps been floating for a greater or lesser time in the intellectual atmosphere. When civilization has outgrown the swaddlings of the times, something must yield. A change is sure to be effected. Although it may not take place without a struggle, or at once, ultimately it will and must attain the necessary accommodation. Change or revolution has never yet taken place without some new ideas having been evolved. Doubts have arisen, and processes of reasoning have been set in motion, plans made, in order to upset the old ideas, to replace them by the new. New ideas and improvements ripen slowly. The minds of men are not ready to receive and adopt them. Skepticism as to the existing state of things makes way for the newer and advanced condition of affairs. Our understanding and reasoning faculties are limited to the state of progress and the steps that have been made in the advancement of civilization. We may be a little before our time, but never very much. We could never have had an electric light if Volta had not discovered the battery. Nor would steam power be so generally used if the marquis of Worcester had not had the idea suggested to him A.D. 1663 of a way to drive up water by fire, etc. Men must learn to know and understand that all knowledge, whether belonging to mythology, idolatry, fable, romance, theology, philosophy, or science--all rules adopted for our mode of conduct, either as individuals, communities, or governments--are the products of the brain, evolved by degrees by a perfectly natural process.