We stand upon the foundation
reared by the generations that have gone before, and we can but
dimly realise the painful and prolonged efforts which it has cost
humanity to struggle up to the point, no very exalted one after all,
which we have reached. Our gratitude is due to the nameless and
forgotten toilers, whose patient thought and active exertions have
largely made us what we are. The amount of new knowledge which one
age, certainly which one man, can add to the common store is small,
and it argues stupidity or dishonesty, besides ingratitude, to
ignore the heap while vaunting the few grains which it may have been
our privilege to add to it. There is indeed little danger at present
of undervaluing the contributions which modern times and even
classical antiquity have made to the general advancement of our
race. But when we pass these limits, the case is different. Contempt
and ridicule or abhorrence and denunciation are too often the only
recognition vouchsafed to the savage and his ways. Yet of the
benefactors whom we are bound thankfully to commemorate, many,
perhaps most, were savages.
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