ABSTRACT
WHEN the peoples rise above the condition of barbarism in which the bare necessities of existence are supplied by rudimentary institutions that are practically the same everywhere, their racial characteristics become more clearly contrasted and their distinctive powers are revealed. Their individuality emerges and each section of humanity is found to have a special mission and vocation. The vast number of ideas of which humanity is capable and the material advantages to be derived from them provide a larger field than any one nation can occupy in its entirety; and were any nation presumptuous enough to make the attempt, its story would be in danger of ending before the work was accomplished. The peoples who have left the deepest trace in history accepted this division of labour without demur and were content with the task of giving utterance to a few partial truths and adapting them to the service of life. This co-operation in the work of civilization, varying in importance according to the intellectual power, the physical and moral worth of each people, is sometimes very trifling in its results, but sometimes of such vast and far-reaching importance that to the work accomplished during a particular period at a particular point on the earth's surface whole centuries and, within those centuries, millions of human beings have been indebted.
