Let us look, then, as some typical moments in the history of Europe and see what were the ideas of citizenship which they embodied in their institutions or which found expression in the thought of their best thinkers, and then turn to the life of our own day and ask how far and in what proportions these several Ideas have been incorporated, or may hereafter be incorporated, in the thought and practice of our every-day life. Matthew Arnold compares man’s efforts to construct society and government to a child forming one word after another from a heap of letters put in his hand : “And man has turned them many times, made Greece, Rome, England, France; yes, nor in vain essay’d Way after way, changes that never cease ; The letters have combined, something was made.”