318 POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



accompanying this fundamental unity of political forms? 

 While losing sight of the common origin of the structures, 

 have we not also become inadequately conscious of the 

 common source of their powers ? How prone we are to forget 

 the ultimate while thinking of the proximate, it may be worth 

 while pausing a moment to observe. 



One who in a storm watches the breaking-up of a wreck or 

 the tearing down of a sea-wall, is impressed by the immense 

 energy of the waves. Of course, when it is pointed out that 

 in the absence of winds no such results can be produced, he 

 recognizes the truth that the sea is in itself powerless, and 

 that the power enabling it to destroy vessels and piers is 

 given by the currents of air which roughen its surface. If he 

 stops short here, however, he fails to identify the force which 

 works these striking changes. Intrinsically, the air is just as 

 passive as the water is. There would be no winds were it 

 not for the varying effects of the Sun s heat on different parts 

 of the Earth s surface. Even when he has traced back thus 

 far the energy which undermines cliffs and makes shingle, he 

 has not reached its source ; for in the absence of that con 

 tinuous concentration of the solar mass caused by the mutual 

 gravitation of its parts, there would be no solar radiations. 



The tendency here illustrated, which all have in some 

 degree and most in a great degree, to associate power with the 

 visible agency exercising it rather than with its incon 

 spicuous source, has, as above implied, a vitiating influence 

 on conceptions at large, and, among others, on political ones. 

 Though the habit, general in past times, of regarding the 

 powers of governments as inherent, has been, by the growth 

 of popular institutions, a good deal qualified ; yet, even now, 

 there is no clear apprehension of the fact that governments 

 are not themselves powerful, but are the instrumentalities of 

 a power. This power existed before governments arose ; 

 governments were themselves produced by it ; and it ever 

 continues to be that which, disguised more or less complete! v, 

 works through them. Let us go back to the beginning. 



