Had there been any really great men among our statesmen they would have
discovered the cause of the alternate “ups and downs” in the prosperity
of the country, and, at least, have attempted some remedy. But we may
look in vain through the whole list of those who have, one after
another, prominently occupied public attention, for a great mind in the
sense of instituting reforms in government; in replacing vicious by
beneficent legislation. Washington, who will always be deservedly
revered, was in no sense a great man save in goodness. As a general or
statesman he has been excelled by dozens since his time, not one of whom
has left anything behind him that will make his name immortal. To be
immortal in history requires that there shall be some basis for it
living in the Government, or in the industrial habits of the people, or
in their religious faiths or rites. Buddha in India, Confucius in China,
Zoroaster in Persia, Mahomet among Mahomedans, and Jesus amongst
Christians, have immortality. But the religious element, _per se_, never
would have civilized the world. Indeed the nations most under the
influence of religious sentiments have done the least to spread
civilization into unknown countries. It is the warlike and intellectual,
in contradistinction to the religious and æsthetic, nations to whom we
owe the almost world-wide enlightenment of the present, while the latter
have remained shut up within themselves, and are nothing but what their
religion makes them. The contrast between Egypt and India or China is,
in this respect, most striking. Egypt, becoming great at home, pushed
out into the surrounding world. With its immense armies under Sesostris
and its no less potent power emanating from the wise men who made the
Alexandrian library a possibility, it left its impress so fixed upon the
world that, even to this day, there are many things in the habits and
customs of the nations, especially in their literature and philosophies,
that are Egyptian. It was an Egyptian colony which laid the foundation
in Greece at Athens for the splendid civilization that was there
developed; for the glory, the military renown and the arts and sciences
that afterwards made Greece at once the admiration and wonder of the
world.