"My answer is no secret to you," said the Professor. "You are not only what you consider yourself--a human being born to joy and sorrow, united to individuals by nature, love, and faith--but you are bound body and soul to an earthly power, of which you think but little, but which, nevertheless, guides you from the first breath you drew to the last gasp of life. When I tell you that you are a child of your people, and a child of the human race, the expression will come so naturally to you that you will not assign any deep meaning to it. Yet this is your highest earthly relation. We are too much accustomed from childhood on to cherish in our hearts only the individuals to whom we are bound by nature or choice, and we seldom stop to think that our nation is the ancestor from whom our parents are descended, that has produced our language, laws, manners, that has given us all we possess, given us everything that constitutes our life, and almost all that determines our fortunes, and elevates our hearts. Yet not our nation alone has accomplished this; the peoples of the earth stand to one another as brothers and sisters, and one nation helps to decide the life and fate of others. All have lived, suffered, and worked together, in order that you may live, enjoy, and do your part in life." Ilse smiled. "The bad king Cambyses, and his Persian also?" "They also," replied the Professor; "for the great net of which your life is one of the meshes, is woven from an infinite number of threads, and if one had been lost the web would be imperfect. Take first a simple illustration. You are indebted to the people of a period, of which every record is now wanting, for the table by which you sit, the needle which you hold in your hand, and the rings on your fingers and in your ears; the shuttle was invented by an unknown people in order that your dress might be woven, and a similar palm-leaf pattern to that which you wear, was devised in the manufactory of a Ph[oe]nician." "Good," said Ilse; "that pleases me; it is a charming thought that antiquity has provided so considerately for my comfort."