Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/435

 Rh to avail more through his friends than through his own right arm. The clasp of the hand will outlive the blow; for there is the strength of two behind every grasp, and of but one behind any blow that evokes it.

A play on French words may serve to fix in mind the necessary evanescence of empire. We may fancy that the word derives from the verb empirer, signifying to deteriorate. By this burlesque etymology its root-meaning comes to be that of going from bad to worse; and an empire becomes accordingly that form of international organization which is foredoomed to decline and fall.

Even the short span of years which recorded history has yet covered brings ample evidence in support of this definition. Either external coalitions to overthrow them or internal coalitions to reject their yoke have ended, or threaten to end, nearly every known empire. The British Empire which still stands and even shows signs of permanence, has learned the lesson of union, and bids fair to become an empire in its name alone. British imperialism was once, as Professor Cramb has told us, the will to give all men under British sway an English mind, in the spirit of the boast of Alexander the Great: “I will make all men Hellenes.” But the instruction of England in the larger art of government, begun in North America, has been continued since, and her imperial aim is fast becoming a will to live with other men and let them live. The British Empire, if it last, will one day be what the Seven Seas choose to make of it, not what England alone chooses to make of it. The Irish mind, the Boer mind, the Hindu mind, will share with others in the process. The United States have of late been tempted to forget the lesson they themselves taught; but Cuba, Mexico and the Philippines stand as witnesses that for all our growth in power, we still hold fast to the doctrines of our Declaration of Independence. With a giant’s strength we have twice and even thrice refused to use it like a giant. Born a Union, we are engaged in laying the foundations of other unions. It is possible to conceive of but one more august political structure than these—one in which every sovereign people in the world should contribute each its own mind to a union which should ensure the perpetual development of the minds of all.

The conclusion of the whole matter may be put into modern American. Empire is the child of the barbarism out of which the world tends; culture the parent of the union into which the world tends. There is no middle term; for it is always barbarism to claim “I am It”; and culture always answers: “There are others.”