Page:Introductory Lecture 109 Medical Department University of Pennsylvania Stille.djvu/4

 returns to the dust out of which it was taken. But the life of nations, societies, and institutions has no fixed and determinate limits. It may be so ephemeral as to leave no trace upon the sands of time; or it may live for centuries, and, gaining strength by increase of years, seem destined to immortality. The judicious student of history is apt to discover that the longevity of institutions, like that of animal organisms, depends first of all upon their inherent vitality, the perfection of their structure, and the freedom and regularity of its action, and then upon the external circumstances to which it stands related. Whatever nation or institution develops its natural powers by a diligent cultivation of whatever will promote their growth tends to become strong and independent. It is not so much the form as the acts of its government that develop the resources of a nation or an institution. There have been tyrannical democracies and liberal monarchies; wisdom has spoken from the agora as well as from the academy; it has flourished under the tyranny of a Louis XIV. and perished under the brutal liberty of a French Republic. These extreme cases justify what common observation demonstrates, that, as regards at least the nations of Europe and their descendants in America, progress and safety have, on the whole, been best secured by the very system which is employed in the most perfect mechanical contrivances, a system in which springs and weights, power and resistance mutually restrict the action of one another. And what is true in mechanics and politics is equally true in every other sphere. Unfettered liberty rushes speedily into license, just as certainly as, on the other hand, despotism paralyzes action. In certain countries of Europe in which the institutions of science and learning have for centuries given but little evidence of life either in activity or in fruit, it is easy to trace their intellectual lethargy to political and ecclesiastical tyranny; and it is equally plain that in the freest nations, and especially in our own, an infinite amount of talent and labor is frittered away, and its results are shaken off like untimely fruit. Genius is often dwarfed in its growth for want of nurture and protection; often seems to have existed for no sufficient end, simply because it