Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 5.djvu/126

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116
H. W. Scott.

individual holds for the society. Only as the conduct of the man as an individual and of the man in society is brought into harmony with surrounding forces, under the government of moral law. can any community make progress; and of this progress experience becomes the test. In our day the multiplying agencies of civilization operating with an activity constantly cumulative and never before equaled, are turned, under pressure of moral forces, into most powerful instruments for the instruction and benefit of mankind. It is probable that nothing else has contributed so much to the help of mankind in the mass, either in material or moral aspects, as rapid increase of human intercourse throughout the world. Action and reaction of peoples on peoples, of races upon races, are continually evolving the activities and producing changes in the thought and character of all. This influence develops the moral forces as rapidly as the intellectual and material; it has brought all parts of the world into daily contact with each other, and each part feels the influence of all the rest. Common agents in this work are commerce in merchandise and commerce in ideas. Neither could make much progress without the other. Populations once were stagnant. Now they are stirred profoundly by all the powers of social agitation: by travel, by rapid movements of commerce, by daily transmission of news of the important events of the world to every part of the world. Motion is freedom : it is science, it is wealth, it is moral advancement. Isolated life is rapidly disappearing: speech writing, the treasures of the world's literature, diffused throughout the world, enlarge and expand the general mind, and show how much is contained within humanity of which men once never dreamed.

The true life of a people is both a history and a poem; the history is a record of the material development resulting from their industrial energy; the poem represents the growth of character, the evolution of the moral, intellectual and spiritual forces that make up their inner life. These two phases must unfold together, if there is to be any real progress. There is an antagonism between them, yet each is necessary to