of mankind, and the maintenance of justice among individuals, are its leading principles.  A government, like an individual, may remain far below its ideal; but, without an ideal, governments and individuals are alike contemptible.  It is tyranny only—­whether individual or popular—­that utters its feeble sneers at the ideologists, as if mankind were brutes to whom instincts were all in all and ideas nothing.  Where intellect and justice are enslaved by that unholy trinity—­Force; Dogma, and Ignorance—­the tendency of governments, and of those subjected to them, must of necessity be retrograde and downward.

There can be little doubt to those who observe the movements of mankind during the course of the fourteen centuries since the fall of the Roman Empire—­a mere fragment of human history—­that its progress, however concealed or impeded, and whether for weal or woe, is towards democracy; for it is the tendency of science to liberate and to equalize the physical and even the intellectual forces of humanity.  A horse and a suit of armour would now hardly enable the fortunate possessor of such advantages to conquer a kingdom, nor can wealth and learning be monopolised in these latter days by a favoured few.  Yet veneration for a crown and a privileged church—­as if without them and without their close connection with each other law and religion were impossible—­makes hereditary authority sacred to great masses of mankind in the old world.  The obligation is the more stringent, therefore, on men thus set apart as it were by primordial selection for ruling and instructing their fellow-creatures, to keep their edicts and their practice in harmony with divine justice.  For these rules cannot be violated with impunity during along succession of years, and it is usually left for a comparatively innocent generation, to atone for the sins of their forefathers.  If history does not teach this it teaches nothing, and as the rules of morality; whether for individuals or for nations, are simple and devoid of mystery; there is the less excuse for governments which habitually and cynically violate the eternal law.

Among self-evident truths not one is more indisputable than that which, in the immortal words of our Declaration of Independence, asserts the right of every human being to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; but the only happiness that can be recognised by a true statesman as the birthright of mankind is that which comes from intellectual and moral development, and from the subjugation of the brutal instincts.

A system according to which clowns remain clowns through all the ages, unless when extraordinary genius or fortunate accident enables an exceptional individual to overleap the barrier of caste, necessarily retards the result to which the philosopher looks forward with perfect faith.