, but is changing and developing every
inheritance and acquisition into something new and strange. The German
strain in our blood is large, for almost from the beginning there has
been a large German element among the successive waves of newcomers
whose children's children have been and are being fused into the
American nation; and I myself trace my origin to that branch of the
Low Dutch stock which raised Holland out of the North Sea. Moreover,
we have taken from you, not only much of the blood that runs through
our veins, but much of the thought that shapes our minds. For
generations American scholars have flocked to your universities, and,
thanks to the wise foresight of his Imperial Majesty the present
Emperor, the intimate and friendly connection between the two
countries is now in every way closer than it has ever been before.

Germany is pre-eminently a country in which the world movement of
to-day in all of its multitudinous aspects is plainly visible. The
life of this University covers the period during which that movement
has spread until it is felt throughout every continent; while its
velocity has been constantly accelerating, so that the face of the
world has changed, and is now changing, as never before. It is
therefore fit and appropriate here to speak on this subject.

When, in the slow procession of the ages, man was developed on this
planet, the change worked by his appearance was at first slight.
Further ages passed, while he groped and struggled by infinitesimal
degrees upward through the lower grades of savagery; for the general
law is that life which is advanced and complex, whatever its nature,
changes more quickly than simpler and less advanced forms. The life of
savages changes and advances with extreme slowness, and groups of
savages influence one another but little. The first rudimentary
beginnings of that complex life of communities which we call
civilization marked a period when man had already long been by far the
most important creature on the planet. The history of the living world
had become, in fact, the history of man, and therefore something
totally different in kind as well as in degree from what it had been
before. There are interesting analogies between what has gone on in
the development of life generally and what has gone on in the
development of human society, and these I shall discuss elsewhere.[9]
But the differences are profound, and go to the root of things.

[9] In the