Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/850

832 The interchange of products is necessarily accompanied, to some extent, with an interchange of ideas. The feeling of curiosity reached a high point of development among the Greeks. It was the thirst to know which sent old Herodotus into the heart of hostile nations, and which is sending thousands to-day, in quest of knowledge, through the highways and byways of the world. Greece first fairly set in train this mental commerce. But the peaceful interchange of thought has grown immensely since the Grecian days, the whole world is being ransacked for old ideas and new experiences, and the thought stock of the several nations is gradually becoming a general thought stock, the freehold property of the world.

It is unquestionable that trading nations which have reached a certain degree of mental advancement are efficient agents in propagating civilization. There are several instances of this in the history of the past, but in most of such cases commerce was aided in its effects by colonization. It was not the movement of a few isolated merchants, but of extensive colonies, that produced the commingling of thought, with its useful results. The Phœnicians were the first great trading nation of whom we have any record; and they were the first to emerge into civilization under peaceful influences. The Greeks followed them in this field, and the lofty enlightenment of Athens is more to be ascribed to its commercial activity, its colonizing spirit, and its free reception of the best minds from other nations than to its warlike vigor and success. In more modern times we have had successively the Venetians, the Genoese, the Spaniards, the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the English advancing into commercial activity and, with it, into phases of enlightened energy in close accordance with the width and character of their commerce.

We no longer have to fight our way into the thoughts of the world. Every step of mental development made by an exterior people is becoming our own without need of its being taken by violence. We pick and choose at will throughout the races of mankind, digest what we thus consume, assimilate the good, avoid the evil, and widen our minds continually in the process. If it is something to learn what good exists unknown to us, it is also something to know what evil exists. A knowledge of good and evil alike is essential to human progress. And this process is in no sense a destructive one. In war not only possessions are destroyed, but to some extent ideas as well. It is only the remnants that enrich the conquering race—the methods of material production, the religions and philosophies, the rigid laws and customs among which they settle down and which they are forced to assimilate.

Modern progress is not gained by the gathering up of the relics