46 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



Thus, then, before we speak of wliat the diflfusion of intelligence 

 is doing for the age in which we have the happiness and the re- 

 sponsibility to live, let us advert, as briefly as possible, to the 

 past moral and social history of our race. We shall then be 

 better enabled to institute this comparative estimate, and by 

 determining tlie positive amou,nt and character of our progress, 

 ascertain not 'merely what may favor or impede it in future, but 

 even more than this, form some approximation to the idea of what 

 ultimately we may reasonably expect to realise. 



The nations of Europe, now the most powerful section of the 

 globe, are of Asiatic origin. In that cradle of the human race 

 the most firmly rooted despotisms have maintained their original 

 character and tendency througli a long series of ages. The voice 

 of the primitive Asiatic world is yet heard in the ancient cosmo- 

 gonies of India, Burmali and China. Much of the early tradition 

 of these nations is lost. 



Passing from scene to scene of the world drama, the great facts 

 in the intellectual history of the nations upon which have hung 

 their destiny are easily traceable. We shall find that the perma- 

 nent greatness of a people does not depend upon mountain barriers 

 or ocean girdles, but upon that self-respect and self-reliance^ which 

 are at once botli cause and effect, the result of Education, in the 

 largest acceptation of the term, and the incentive to its wider 

 extension. 



Which of the empires founded, not upon nature, not upon a 

 due recognition of the wants and destiny of an intellectual, free, 

 responsible and ever advancing being; which of these, founded 

 upon violence done to nature, have long endured 1 While Athens 

 and Carthage were content with their own toil, (though there 

 were other causes of certain but prolonged decay,) they were 

 invincible and free. When they took to foreign spoliation, the 

 compact fabric of their greatness burst asunder like the attenuated 

 soap bubble. How long did the empire of Charlemagne endure? 

 Not till his corpse was cold. Over the dead body of Alexander 

 the Great his feeble successors quarreled. To come to later times, 

 what in all human probability might have been the issue had 

 Napoleon avoided the disastrous attempt upon Eussia in 1812; or 



