Rhine and the Danube. The German peril--the future
had luminously to demonstrate it--was much less than Augustus and
Tiberius believed. In other words, the first two emperors thought that
the unity of the Empire would be maintained by a vigorous, solid army,
while the economic progress, which spread "corruption," appeared to
them to put it to risk.

Exactly the opposite happened; the army continued to decay,
notwithstanding the desperate efforts of Tiberius, while the inner
force of economic interests held the countries well bound together.
It is impossible to oppose this course of reasoning, in itself most
accurate; but what conclusion is to be drawn from it? In the chaotic
conflict of passions and interests that make up the world, the deeds
of a man or a party are not useful in proportion to the objective
truth of the ideas acted out, or to the success attained. Their
usefulness depends upon the direction of the effort, on the ends it
proposes, on the results it obtains. There are men and parties of whom
one might say, they were right to be wrong, when chimerical ideas
and mistakes have sustained their courage to carry out an effective
effort; there are others, instead, of whom it might be said that they
were wrong to be right, when their clear vision of present and past
kept them from accomplishing some painful but necessary duty.

Certainly the old Roman traditions were destined to be overwhelmed
by the invasion of Oriental ideas and habits; but what might not
have happened if every one had understood this from the very times of
Augustus; if then no one had opposed the invasion of Orientalism; if
mysticism and the monarchy of divine right had transformed Italy or
the Empire within fifty years instead of three centuries? I should
not at all hesitate to affirm that certain errors are in certain
conjunctions much wiser than the corresponding verities. There is
nothing more useful in life than resistance, though apparently futile,
against social forces fated to perish, because these, struggling on to
the very end, always succeed in imposing a part of themselves on the
victorious power, and the result is always better than a complete
and unantagonised victory of the opposing force. To the obstinate
resistance with which republican principles combated Asiatic monarchy
in Rome, we must even to-day render thanks for the fact that Europe
was not condemned, like Asia, to carry the eternal yoke of semidivine
absolutism, even