remained groups bearing the name of a nation without possessing its constituents, organized into governments that have the form and the appearance without the means and the instruments. And here it is, now that the first half of the twentieth century has closed, resigned to primitive pro-gressivism, savoring the memories of the past, asleep upon the glories of yesterday — while nations on the face of the earth split the atom, converse with the heavenly spheres, and pierce the seven stacked heavens.

The catastrophe of Palestine, with its shame and humiliation and the disintegration and mutual recrimi-nation that went with it, came as confirmation of what I say, and as a clear sign that the conscious Arab mentality has not yet been formed in this age.

The glories and boasts of the Arabs will remain splendid tales for their children and their young, and an effective narcotic for their minds and brains; and their long gleaming lances and their keen Indian swords will remain bewitching phantoms for their imagination and entertaining subjects for their banter.

Israel will harden and grow strong so long as it is conscious, united, and mutually supporting; and the Arabs will wither and weaken because they are a heedless people who do not understand... a people among whose greatest men the enemy's intrigues found their way, corrupting their consciences and counterfeiting their weapons, so that they celebrated defeat as a manifest victory from God... and supplied the enemy with food and clothing as though it were an enormous material gain... They saw the bellies of their fathers ripped open, the eyes of their chil-dren put out, and their sanctities violated and made a public show... and then they went on enjoying the delights of thrones as kings... relishing the enticements of power as presidents... and savoring life as communities and as individu-als... These, by the life of God, are the losers.

Some may trace this painful reality back to causes that do not lack plausibility, and to factors containing much truth; but we are not now explaining matters

or tracing them to their causes — we are only recording present conditions and setting down actual events, without incrimination and without apportioning blame. It is no freak of natural constitution, no overpowering regional climate, that holds the Arabs back today from movement, evolution, and progress; the Arabs today are afflicted with flabbiness, deprived of the blessing of perception and the power of discernment. Hence the horn of danger has risen against us, and the appetites of the strong states have fastened upon the virgin soil we live on and the natural resources lying unexploited.

The creative human mind is the axis of order and the source of illumination. Its creative powers, whatever their innate readiness and hereditary endowments, are affected to a far-reaching degree by what surrounds them as they grow and what they are trained on in their youth. To free them from illusion and caprice, and to clear them of weakness and distortion, is therefore a pressing necessity and an indispensable condition, so as to spur them toward the unknown and embolden them to storm it and bring it to light. Would that I knew — can the mind be freed, grow, and create in the narrowness of horizons and their darkness?? Can its powers harden, order themselves, and produce amid the gloom and turbulence of the atmosphere?? Can the faculty of thought reveal itself and shine amid the scheming and intrigue of the scene?? Can the personality of a nation grow strong and its potentialities work upon one another between the racing of scientific mandates and the jostling of cultural colonial-ism?? Can a people grow great in capacity and in being while its vital constituents are entrusted to other men, torn at by their aims and parceled out among their interests?? Science in its pure essence and its authentic, positive tradition is progressive by nature, and its progressivism is marked by aspiration, liberation, conti-nuity, and order. Where, then, beside our dependent slackness as communities and peoples, are the applied scientific principles which the understanding peoples never cease revising and improving, to

develop conceptions and enrich minds, that by them they may prevail, grow strong, and hold sway??? Where is the unification of culture in our world? Where is constructive discipline in our teaching curricula? Is it a reality in our society, carrying its authentic meaning among our classes? Has culture been unified in our arenas, and rallied around raising the level of the environ-ment, warding off collapse, and clarifying sound scientific aims? Has learning brought woman to the discovery of those delicate spiritual regions required for the harmony of married life and the building up of the Arab home? Has the educating of our young men led them to a feeling for the public duty and a gladness in undertaking and performing it?

The true measure of any society's progress is the amount of reform-ing cultural purpose its activity has absorbed. Every learning borrowed from abroad and drawn from others remains an outward trait and an external varnish; it does not work for the nation's good and does not become a national heritage purely its own. The peoples who have advanced by long strides in the field of this understanding and perception did not secure true learning for themselves, or enjoy its ripe fruits, until they had fulfilled its essential condition and original motive: the search for the essential truth latent in the method of instruction — that method which is disciplined in its contents and disciplines the one who imparts it.

Our teaching curriculum has rested upon memory and the stuffing of the mind, without any regard for the kernel of personal-ity, any concern for strengthening the sense of public duty, or any polishing of the substance of char-acter. The student memorizes his subjects to pass the examination; and once he has performed this duty and obtained the certificate, he goes out into the world with the stuffing already fading from his memory before a few months have passed. So, for all the high diplomas he carries, he does not know how to lay one brick in the building of this society, nor how to serve the nation except through a mechanical, money-earning post that supports him and his kin;