Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/479

Rh of modern colonies, from Columbus to Cargill. Even "celestial minds" are sometimes governed bj the primary passion of the male animal in its most spiritual form. Pythagoras, unable to gain bearers or found a school in Samos, emigrated to Croton, where he established the Jesuit order of the ancient world. Xenophanes emigrated from Colophon and finally settled at Elea, which thence gave its name to the loftiest of Greek philosophic sects. The motive is operative everywhere and everywhen. It impelled Aquinas and Scotus from Italy and England to France; urged Niebuhr, Bernstorff, and Moltke from Denmark to Prussia; attracted Rossi, Scherer, and Cherbuliez from Geneva to Paris; and led Boyesen to New York. The fact that an immigrant to the United States may rise to any position save that of President is known to be in the minds of young Germans who seek a freer country than their own. The consciousness or the conceit of ability makes many a youth restless in the narrow environment of a Scottish or English country town, and, learning that push and volubility, as well as genuine talent, may carry a man to high political office in a British colony, he emigrates to become (what some have been styled) a "colonial Gambetta."

4. Freedom is as alluring as power. The artisan who is constantly being involved in strikes of which he disapproves emigrates to a country where trades-unionism is in its infancy. The independence of the colonial workman excites the envy of his English rivals. Staid elderly men look back with regret on the free life of the gold fields. Protestant Irish farmers, of Scottish extraction, emigrated last century to become freeholders in the United States. Frenchmen who have returned to France go back to New Zealand, unable to bear the constraint of overcivilization. The same passion for freedom in higher things carried Puritan and Moravian, Puseyite and Free-Churchman oversea for liberty to worship God in their own way. Enthusiasm for political liberty took Forster, Paine, and a crowd of dupes to France after 1789. The same feeling sometimes makes men retire from the world. Ulysses hoped to "touch the Happy Isles." Hamilcar Barca longed to escape from the turmoil of Carthage and sail for the fabled islands of Atlantis. Shelley, Tennyson, Mrs. Browning, and many plainer folk have cherished the same lotus-eater's dream. The disillusioned ex-governor who returns to spend the evening of his days in a Pacific paradise within the waters of the colony he once ruled is a type of the few who realize it. Do they always find the peace they seek?

5. Public and private oppression has made many migrate or emigrate. The Ionians and Syracusans who were driven westward by subjugation or sedition had no choice. The conquest of their