It gives a very
insufficient idea of the importance of the strivings which take
place to improve and elevate human nature and life, to suppose that
their chief value consists in the amount of actual improvement
realised by their means, and that the consequence of their cessation
would merely be that we should remain as we are. A very small
diminution of those exertions would not only put a stop to
improvement, but would turn the general tendency of things towards
deterioration; which, once begun, would proceed with increasingly
rapidity, and become more and more difficult to check, until it
reached a state often seen in history, and in which many large
portions of mankind even now grovel; when hardly anything short of
superhuman power seems sufficient to turn the tide, and give a fresh
commencement to the upward movement.
These reasons make the word Progress as unapt as the terms Order and
Permanence to become the basis for a classification of the
requisites of a form of government. The fundamental antithesis which
these words express does not lie in the things themselves, so much
as in the types of human character which answer to them. There are, we
know, some minds in which caution, and others in which boldness,
predominates: in some, the desire to avoid imperilling what is already
possessed is a stronger sentiment than that which prompts to improve
the old and acquire new advantages; while there are others who lean
the contrary way, and are more eager for future than careful of
present good.
Pages:
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42