Page:The influence of commerce on civilization (IA influenceofcomme00ellerich).pdf/8

2 existence. There has ever been the individual effort, the hope of the family and of the individual in the great object of self-support, self-sacrifice, and self-competence, often to be blasted in the hour of prosperity by the predominant weight of irresponsible, unreasoning barbarism and ignorance. In the language of the great German poet, Schiller:

Where I have failed in continuity of theme, I hope I may be judged mercifully, because also, "quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus."

These two words in the English language mean much and their analyses and corresponding equivalents in many other, now unknown tongues, mean more. Since ever the world began, from the earliest records now extant of ancient peoples and buried civilization, these two words are stamped on the records of time. Commerce presupposes and marches hand in hand with civilization, and commerce through all times has developed civilization, while civilization has often failed and retrograded to the detriment and set-back of commerce. During all the turbulent mundane history of this our earth, through all the effacements of empires and the downfall of civilization, commerce has ever emerged supreme from the ashes of her predecessors to initiate and establish a new era even more extensive and far reaching; and civilization, real or supposed, has always followed, brought into birth by the energy of commerce, to again die away by the effeteness of its own luxury and ineptitude. The "Sturm und Drang" of commerce "non habet leges", and in this science, for science it is, "necessity has no law", and