He compares it to an athlete who has
never run on 'Constitution Hill,' to a statue so beautiful that it
is entirely removed from the ordinary conditions of humanity, and
consequently from the canons of criticism.
The Roman state had attained in his eyes, by means of the mutual
counteraction of three opposing forces, (7) that stable equilibrium
in politics which was the ideal of all the theoretical writers of
antiquity. And in connection with this point it will be convenient
to notice here how much truth there is contained in the accusation
often brought against the ancients that they knew nothing of the
idea of Progress, for the meaning of many of their speculations
will be hidden from us if we do not try and comprehend first what
their aim was, and secondly why it was so.
Now, like all wide generalities, this statement is at least
inaccurate. The prayer of Plato's ideal City - [Greek text which
cannot be reproduced], might be written as a text over the door of
the last Temple to Humanity raised by the disciples of Fourier and
Saint-Simon, but it is certainly true that their ideal principle
was order and permanence, not indefinite progress.
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