ends in the means, securing a peace, a comfort, an ease, a leisure of
which they made no particularly valuable use. It has been said that at
no time in the world's history were civilized men so happy as under the
Roman Empire. It might be said with greater truth that at no time were
civilized men so unhappy, for the happiness that was theirs was empty,
mere dead-sea fruit, dust and ashes in the mouth; a very Death in Life.
Life was without savour, and they turned away from it in weariness and
disgust and despair, seeking and finding in Philosophy--the fruits of
reflection upon life--nothing better than consolation for the wounds and
disillusions of life. Thus those who gave their lives to Rome lost
heart, and retreating into themselves found nothing there but solitude
and emptiness. Civilization was but the husk of a life that had fled.

Nevertheless, as it is necessary for the living body to deposit a bony
skeleton and for the living soul to harden its impulses into habits and
stiffen its aspirations into rules and plans of action, so civilization
as a whole must create within and around it a structure of ordered and
systematic thought and action within which the higher forces now
recognized and disengaged may be all the more free to do their work.
Without such a mechanical or apparently unspiritual basis these forces
can only work fugitively, erratically, and so ineffectively, as they did
in the Greek world. To the prosaic business of creating or recreating
and maintaining in being such a structure a large part of our energies
must be devoted, and in all this from the Romans we have still much to
learn. If we decline to learn and digest this lesson, turning from such
concernment in disgust or disdain, our lives will be lost in vain
dreams, in idle longings and empty regrets; and the kingdom of Freedom
and Truth will be taken from us and given to others who have known how
to grow up and to face like men the hardships and hazards without which
it cannot be won or held. From the inspiring visions of these ideals we