As a boy, I believed my opportunities to be limited by the achievements of the past. As a man, I see in these past achievements not hindrances, but the foundation stones which the past has laid down, upon which the present must build, in order that the future may erect the perfected structure of a higher civilization. I see all of this clearly, and I see one thing more. In the old days which I had erstwhile envied, one event of world import might have been chronicled for each decade, but in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, such an event may be chronicled for each year, or month or even for each day. The achievements of the past were noteworthy: these of the present are stupendous. The process of social evolution reveals itself in these progressive steps. Because the past has built, the present is building--building in order that the future may stand higher in its realization of potential life. The past was an age of uncertain, hesitating advance. The present, an age of dynamic achievement, leads on into the future of human development. In the twentieth century: 1. Knowledge provides a basis for activity. 2. The social atmosphere palpitates with enthusiastic resolve and abounds in noble endeavor. 3. There is work for each one to perform. The despondent boy has thus evolved into the enthusiastic worker whose watchword is "Forward!"--forward towards a new goal, whose very existence is made attainable through the achievements of the past: a goal before which the triumphs of bygone ages pale into insignificance. The past worked with things. Pyramids were built, cities constructed, mountains tunneled, trade augmented, fortunes amassed. Hear Ruskin's comment on this devotion to material wealth: "Nevertheless, it is open, I repeat, to serious question, ... whether, among national manufactures, that of souls of a good quality may not at last turn out a quite lucrative one. Nay, in some far-away and yet undreamed of hour, I can even imagine that England ... as a Christian mother, may at last attain to the virtues and the treasures of a heathen one, and be able to lead forth her sons, saying: 'These are my jewels.'"[1] The past worked with things: the future, rising higher in the scale of civilization, must work with men--with the plastic, living clay of humanity. As Solomon long ago said, "He that ruleth his own spirit is greater than he that taketh a city." The men of the past built cities and took them. They brought the forces of nature into subjection and remodeled the world as a living place for humanity, yet, save for a shadow in Rome and an echo from Greece, there is scarcely a trace in history of a consistent attempt to evolve nobler men.