n what progress
consists. This is a task which, I believe, I am more competent to
attempt perhaps even than Wilson himself, because I have had unusual
opportunities of travel, and have endeavoured to utilize them to clear
my mind of prejudices. I flatter myself that I can regard with perfect
impartiality the ideals of different countries, and in particular those
of the new world which, I presume, are to dominate the future. In
attempting to estimate what progress means, one could not do better, I
suppose, than describe the civilization of the United States. For in
describing that, one will be describing the whole civilization of the
future, seeing that what America is our colonies are, or will become,
and what our colonies are we, too, may hope to attain, if we make the
proper sacrifices to preserve the unity of the empire. Let us see,
then, what, from an objective point of view, really is the future of
this progressing world of ours.

"Perhaps, however, before proceeding to analyse the spiritual ideals of
the American people, I had better give some account of their country.
For environment, as we all know now, has an incalculable effect upon
character. Consider, then, the American continent! How simple it is!
How broad! How large! How grand in design! A strip of coast, a range
of mountains, a plain, a second range, a second strip of coast! That
is all! Contrast the complexity of Europe, its lack of symmetry, its
variety, irregularity, disorder and caprice! The geography of the two
continents already foreshadows the differences in their civilizations.
On the one hand simplicity and size; on the other a hole-and-corner
variety; there immense rivers, endless forests, interminable plains,
indefinite repetition of a few broad ideas; here distracting
transitions, novelties, surprises, shocks, distinctions in a word,
already suggesting Distinction. Even in its physical features America
is the land of quantity, while Europe is that of quality. And as with
the land, so with its products. How large are the American fruits!
How tall the trees! How immense the oysters! What has Europe by
comparison! Mere flavour and form, mere beauty, delicacy and grace!
America, one would say, is the latest work of the great artist--we are
told, indeed, by geologists, that it is the youngest of the
continents--conceived at an age when he had begun to repeat himself,
broad, summary, impressionist, audacious in empty space; where