Such witness of the dead is both a challenge and a consolation; a challenge, to guard this heritage of the past with the chivalry of the future, nor bate one jot of the ancient spirit and resolution of our race; a consolation, in the reflection that from a valour at once so remote and so near a degenerate race can hardly spring. With us, let me repeat, the decision rests, with us and with this generation. Never since on Sinai God spoke in thunder has mandate more imperative been issued to any race, city, or nation than now to this nation and to this people. And, again, if we should hesitate, or if we should decide wrongly, it is not the loss of prestige, it is not the narrowed bounds we have to fear, it is the judgment of the dead and the despair of the living, of the inarticulate myriads who have trusted to us, it is the arraigning eyes of the unborn. [1] I am aware of Spinoza's distinction of the "clara et distincta idea" and the "inadequat[oe] idea"; but the distinction above flows from a conception of the universe and of man's destiny which is not Spinoza's nor Spinozistic. [2] Was machst du an der Welt? sie ist schon gemacht; Der Herr der Schöpfung hat alles bedacht. Dein Loos ist gefallen, verfolge die Weise, Der Weg ist begonnen, vollende die Reise. GOETHE, _West-östlicher Divan, Buch der Sprüche_. [3] Recent investigation has made it clear that the history of Islamic Arabia is not severed by any violent convulsion from pre-Mohammedan Arabia. "The times of ignorance" were not the desolate waste which Tabari, "the Livy of the Arabs," paints, and down to the close of the eighteenth century the comparison between England, Rome, and Islam offers a fair field for speculative politics. [4] Yet the scientific conception of the _destruction_ or _decay_ of this whole star-system by fire or ice does of itself turn progress into a mockery. (See Prof. C. A. Young, _Manual of Astronomy_, p. 571, and Prof. F. R. Moulton, _Introduction to Astronomy_, p. 486.) [5] Condorcet's biography (1786) of his master is one of the noblest works of its class in French literature. Turgot's was one of those minds that like Chamfort's or Villiers de L'Isle Adam's scatter bounteously the ideas which others use or misuse. The fogs and mists of Comte's portentous tomes are all derived, it has often been pointed out, from a few paragraphs of Turgot. And a fragment written by Turgot in his youth inspired something of the substance and even of the title of Condorcet's great _Esquisse_.