ich we owe this marked
superiority are either accidental or the result of generations of
experiment, assisted by an immense array of ascertained facts from which
safe inductions can be made. It is not, probably, the superiority of
the European races over the Greeks and Romans to which we may ascribe
the wonderful advance of modern society, but the particular direction
which genius was made to take. Had the Greeks given the energy of their
minds to mechanical forces as they did to artistic creations, they might
have made wonderful inventions. But it was not so ordered by Providence.
At that time the world was not in the stage of development when this
particular direction of intellect could have been favored. The
development of the physical sciences, with their infinite multiplicity
and complexity, required more centuries of observation, collection and
collation of facts, deductions from known phenomena, than the ancients
had had to work with; while the more ethereal realms of philosophy,
ethics, aesthetics, and religion, though needing keen study of Nature
and of man, depended more upon inner spiritual forces, and less upon
accumulated detail of external knowledge. Yet as there were some
subjects which the Greeks and Romans seemed to exhaust, some fields of
labor and thought in which they never have been and perhaps never will
be surpassed, so some future age may direct its energies into channels
that are as unknown to us as clocks and steam-engines were to the
Greeks. This is the age of mechanism and of science; and mechanism and
science sweep everything before them, and will probably be carried to
their utmost capacity and development. After that the human mind may
seek some new department, some new scope for its energies, and an age of
new wonders may arise,--perhaps after the present dominant races shall
have become intoxicated with the greatness of their triumphs and have
shared the fate of the old monarchies of the East. But I would not
speculate on the destinies of the European nations, whether they are to
make indefinite advances until they occupy and rule the whole world, or
are destined to be succeeded by nations as yet undeveloped,--savages, as
their fathers were when Rome was in the fulness of material wealth
and grandeur.

I have shown that in the field of artistic excellence, in literary
composition, in the arts of government and legislation, and even in the
realm of philosophical speculation, the ancients