Hence, to obtain a substantially correct knowledge of the present, the facts of it must not only be considered as facts of the present, but their relations to, and dependencies upon prior facts, out of which they arose, must be traced, so that it may be determined why they exist. It is not sufficient to simply assert that this or that is thus or so. To do so carries no conviction nor prophetic knowledge of what must be next, as a necessary sequence. But if a retrospective glance be taken of the causes that produced it, it is thus demonstrated why it is thus. If the demonstration is placed with the fact, and their tendencies are examined, it may be fair to conclude that what they may next lead to, may be in a measure predicated. The chief value, then, of an intimate knowledge of the past is, that from it the future may be foreseen, and that the lesson it teaches may assist in the formation of aids to the natural order of things. If a tree or plant is desired in a certain place, for a certain purpose, its growth is promoted by all the means which experience has demonstrated will assist. All other growths that draw from the same source for supplies, and thereby diminish its fountain of supplies, are destroyed; the weeds are uprooted, and if the natural supplies which the earth and air furnish are not sufficient for its demands, that which is lacking is supplied. The same line of action should govern in the various departments of nature, and especially in the higher departments of mind. There is another consideration that should never be lost sight of when a survey of the situation is to be attempted; and this is, that while the facts which are to be passed upon bear special relations to their immediate predecessors and surroundings, that these with them bear certain definite, general relations to the facts of all past time, and to those that will be in all future time. The present is a part of the common order of the universe, extending infinitely backward and forward—a part of the line of evolvement, neither end of which can be compassed by human mind; and if we would learn well, we must learn all there is to learn regarding what we learn. It is a definite and unanswerable proposition, then, that every nation of which we have historic record, was a result of pre-existing causes, and led to further effects, and that each filled and performed a part, especially its own, which was a natural and necessary result of the time and place it existed in. By a careful study of the rise and fall of each of the great nations that have existed and an analytic comparison of the elements of strength and decay that were prominent therein, and of their relations to each other, just deductions as to what the present will lead to, may be arrived at. If the present is the result of the past, the future must be the result of the present, and like it be the experiences of creation in the process of evolution from the infinite to the infinite.