which yet lacks poetic expression. When we consider the evolution of man and of institutions, we see that we are very far from perfection, and that each period of history is a period of development. We read of the brutal traits of our ancestors, their ignorance, and their superstition, and we can still discover the same tendencies, only more refined and better controlled. Along the avenue of progress we march toward the high destiny of the race. Evolution is the law both of Spencer and of Hegel. Every struggle of an earnest soul gives impetus to the movement.
A Shakespeare, reared on the steppes of Central Asia, among the Tartar hordes of Genghis Khan, would have been a savage—a poetic savage, perhaps, but still a savage—bloodthirsty, restless, and wild. Born of a primitive race, in some sunny clime, he would have looked dreamily upon the world and life, somewhat as an animal of the forest; he would have fed on the spontaneous products of nature, and have reposed under the shadow of his palm tree. Shakespeare of England, by a long process of education, gained the ideas of his age and the culture of the great civilizations of the past. His education and the forceful ideas of a period of thought and reformation and investigation stimulated the distinctively human intelligence, and awakened subjective analysis and poetic fancy, and he made true pictures of human character, world types, in history, tragedy, and comedy. Education enables man to begin real life where the previous age left off. It is an inherited capital. Ideas, fancies, principles, laws, discoveries, experience from failures, which were the work of centuries, are
