But these nations have
come out of the 'pre-economic stage' too soon; they have been put to
learn while yet only too apt to unlearn. Such cases do not vitiate,
they confirm, the principle--that a nation which has just gained
variability without losing legality has a singular likelihood to be
a prevalent nation.
No nation admits of an abstract definition; all nations are beings
of many qualities and many sides; no historical event exactly
illustrates any one principle; every cause is intertwined and
surrounded with a hundred others. The best history is but like the
art of Rembrandt; it casts a vivid light on certain selected causes,
on those which were best and greatest; it leaves all the rest in
shadow and unseen. To make a single nation illustrate a principle,
you must exaggerate much and you must omit much. But, not forgetting
this caution, did not Rome--the prevalent nation in the ancient
world--gain her predominance by the principle on which I have dwelt?
In the thick crust of her legality there was hidden a little seed of
adaptiveness. Even in her law itself no one can fail to see that,
binding as was the habit of obedience, coercive as use and wont at
first seem, a hidden impulse of extrication DID manage, in some
queer way, to change the substance while conforming to the
accidents--to do what was wanted for the new time while seeming to
do only what was directed by the old time.
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