i 3 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ond stage out of the stage where permanence is most wanted, into 

 that where variability is most wanted ; and you cannot comprehend 

 why progress is so slow, till you see how hard the most obstinate ten- 

 dencies of human nature make that step to mankind. 



Of course the nation we are supposing must keep the virtues of its 

 first stage as it passes into the after-stage, else it will he trodden out ; 

 it will have lost the savage virtues in getting the beginning of the 

 civilized virtues; and the savage virtues which tend to war are the 

 daily bread of human nature. Carlyle said, in his graphic way, " The 

 ultimate question between every two human beings is, ' Can I kill 

 thee, or canst thou kill me ? ' " History is strewn with the wrecks of 

 nations which have gained a little progressiveness at the cost of a 

 great deal of hard manliness, and have thus prepared themselves for 

 destruction as soon as the movements of the world gave a chance for 

 it. But these nations have come out of the " preeconomic stage " too 

 soon ; they have been put to learn while yet only too apt to unlearn. 

 Such cases do not vitiate, they confirm, the principle that a nation 

 which has just gained variability, without losing legality, has a singu- 

 lar likelihood to be a prevalent nation. 



No nation admits of an abstract definition ; all nations are beino-s 

 of many qualities and many sides; no historical event exactly illus- 

 trates any one principle ; every cause is intertwined and surrounded 

 with a hundred others. The best history is but like the art of Rem- 

 brandt : it casts a vivid light on certain selected causes, on those 

 which were best and greatest ; it leaves all the rest in shadow and un- 

 seen. To make a single nation illustrate a principle, you must exag- 

 gerate much and you must omit much. But, not forgetting this 

 caution, did not Rome the prevalent nation in the ancient world 

 gain her predominance by the principle on which I have dwelt ? In 

 the thick crust of her legality there was hidden a little seed of adap- 

 tiveness. Even in her law itself no one can fail to see that, binding 

 as was the habit of obedience, coercive as use and wont at first seem, 

 a hidden impulse of extrication did manage, in some queer way, to 

 change the substance while conforming to the accidents to do what 

 was wanted for the new time, while seeming to do only what was 

 directed by the old time. And the moral of their whole history is the 

 same : each Roman generation, so far as we know, differs a little and 

 in the best times often but a very little from its predecessors. And, 

 therefore, the history is so continuous as it goes, though its two ends 

 are so unlike. The history of many nations is like the stage of the 

 English drama : one scene is succeeded on a sudden by a scene quite 

 different a cottage by a palace, and a windmill by a fortress. But 

 the history of Rome changes as a good diorama changes : while you 

 look, you hardly see it alter; each moment is hardly different from 

 the last moment ; yet at the close the metamorphosis is complete, and 

 scarcely any thing is as it began. Just so in the history of the great 



