ed, its representative on a
little scale. Groups of men, or nations, are distributed by the
same accidents, or complete the same cycle as the individual. Some
scarcely pass beyond infancy; some are destroyed on a sudden; some
die of mere old age. In this confusion of events, it might seem
altogether hopeless to disentangle the law which is guiding them
all, and demonstrate it clearly. Of such groups each may exhibit,
at the same moment, an advance to a different stage, just as we see
in the same family the young, the middle aged, and the old. * * *
In each nation, moreover, the contemporaneously different classes,
the educated and illiterate, the idle and industrious, the rich and
poor, the intelligent and superstitious, represent different
contemporaneous stages of advancement. One may have made a great
progress, another scarcely have advanced at all. How shall we
ascertain the real state of the case? Which of these classes shall
we regard as the truest and most perfect type?'

In order to deal with this problem, and to demonstrate the general
nature of a movement having such diverse components, we must, continues
Professor Draper, select, from a family or a nation, or a family of many
nations, such members or classes or states as most closely represent
respectively its type or have advanced most completely in their career.
In a state the leading or intellectual class is always the true
representative. It has passed gradually through the lower stages, and
has made the greatest advance.

We are next called to notice that individual life is maintained only by
the production and destruction of organic particles, death being
necessarily the condition of life; and that a similar process occurs in
the existence of a nation, in which the individual represents the
organic molecule, whose production, continuance, and death in the
person, answers to the production, continuance, and death of a person in
the state. In the same manner that individuals change through the action
of physical agencies and submit to impressions, so likewise do
aggregates of men constituting nations. 'A national type pursues its way
physically and intellectually through changes and developments answering
to those of the individual, and being represented by infancy, childhood,
youth, manhood, old age, and death, respectively.'

This orderly process may, however, be disturbed by e