Page:The stuff of manhood (1917).djvu/168

164 wealth. Our new banking system is meant for this very purpose, to provide immaterial instrumentalities. Millions of dollars are transported invisibly. By a cable message or a message through the air untold wealth that was in London can be made to appear in New York. And all these intangible forms of wealth are exceeded in the judgment of the late Mr. J. P. Morgan by the credit of character, something still more "metaphysical."

The spiritualization of the material keeps pace on one side with the materialization of the spiritual on the other.

However clear or foggy our ideas on these issues may be now, viewing them as present issues, we cannot fail to see sharply the indisputable facts of the past. Looking backward we simply do not discern and cannot remember the visible and outward values or possessors of values at all. Where is the actual material wealth of earlier days, the flocks, the gold and silver, the palaces? The amazing thing is that it is all gone. The gold and silver which Rome gathered from the world, which went home to Spain in the days of the Conquistadores, where is it all now? Where are those who boasted it and built their fame or power on it? Shelley tells us in his sonnet, "Ozymandias,"