Ponder well over the fact, that without knowledge it will be impossible for you to raise yourselves to a high level. “The barbarian,” remarks Dr. Croly, “cannot bring the past in aid of the present, cannot ascend a step in civilization on the stone laid by the generation gone; he has virtually no ancestors, and can have no posterity. The red man of the West is, at this moment, the same solitary, fierce, and miserable being that he was a thousand years ago. The Mongol is the same wild, marauding, and miserable being as when he followed the trumpets of Tamerlane.” {24} Now, what is the reason that these people do not advance? It is because they do not begin building the fabric of sound knowledge. And do you not perceive that the same deficiency which keeps them down as a nation, will also keep you down as individuals? If, among these people, one generation laid the foundation, and another and another continually built thereon, they would rise in proportion in civilization and power. The scholar of to-day, therefore, owes his high position to the accumulations of the giant-intellects of the past. “Other men laboured, and ye are entered into their labours.” The modern scholar by moderate effort, though no giant, stands upon an elevation which was piled up by one generation of learners and thinkers after another with slow, painstaking, and disinterested toil. This rich heritage of knowledge, this grand moral leverage, this high energy of position, constituting the imperative reason for not “breaking with the past”—of which the present is the outcome—it should be your holy ambition to attain. For how can you stretch out a hand to pull others up, unless you occupy higher ground than they? Bear with me then while I tell you that unless you thus strive to fit yourselves for the onerous duties of the sacred calling which you hope to adopt, you will be doing nothing towards averting the downfall of Welsh nationality. Of course, you will meet with too many who will tell you that the only way to do this is to encourage the present fatal tendency of Cambria to live solely on her remembrances. Meanwhile, however, the invincible army of progress, with the tramp of doom to effete nationalities, marches steadily and irresistibly on; and the Welsh, as a distinct race, if not better led and advised, will, by the deadly error of seeking “the living among the dead,” simply become a people of the past.