A vainglory is it, and like a northern light, comes but to fade and leave the sky more dark.
Out of the soil of barbarism it has grown like a tree, and, as I believe, into the soil like a tree it will once more, sooner or later, fall again, as the Egyptian civilization fell, as the Hellenic civilization fell, and as the Roman civilization and many others of which the world has now lost count, fell also.
Do not let me, however, be understood as decrying our modern institutions, representing as they do the gathered experience of humanity applied for the good of all.

Of course they have great advantages -- hospitals for instance; but then, remember, we breed the sickly people who fill them.

In a savage land they do not exist.

Besides, the question will arise: How many of these blessings are due to Christianity as distinct from civilization?
And so the balance sways and the story runs -- here a gain, there a loss, and Nature's great average struck across the two, whereof the sum total forms one of the factors in that mighty equation in which the result will equal the unknown quantity of her purpose.
I make no apology for this digression, especially as this is an introduction which all young people and those who never like to think (and it is a bad habit) will naturally skip.

It seems to me very desirable that we should sometimes try to understand the limitations of our nature, so that we may not be carried away by the pride of knowledge.