can
infuse into his stagnating veins a portion of our enterprise.

[Sidenote: What China has really accomplished.] A trustworthy account of
the present condition of China would be a valuable gift to philosophy,
and also to statesmanship. On a former page I have remarked (Chap. I.
Vol. I.) that it demands the highest policy to govern populations living
in great differences of latitude. Yet China has not only controlled her
climatic strands of people, she has even made them, if not homogeneous,
yet so fitted to each other that they all think and labour alike. Europe
is inevitably hastening to become what China is. In her we may see what
we shall be like when we are old.

A great community, aiming to govern itself by intellect rather than by
coercion, is a spectacle worthy of admiration, even though the mode by
which it endeavours to accomplish its object is plainly inadequate.
[Sidenote: Difference in government by force and intelligence.] Brute
force holds communities together as an iron nail binds pieces of wood by
the compression it makes--a compression depending on the force with
which it has been hammered in. It also holds more tenaciously if a
little rusted with age. But intelligence binds like a screw. The things
it has to unite must be carefully adjusted to its thread. It must be
gently turned, not driven and so it retains the consenting parts firmly
together.

Notwithstanding the imperfections of a system founded on such a faulty
basis, that great community has accomplished what many consider to be
the object of statesmanship. They think that it should be permanence in
Institutions. But permanence is only, in an apparent sense, the object
of good statesmanship; progression, in accordance with the natural
tendency, is the real one. The successive steps of such a progression
follow one another so imperceptibly that there is a delusive appearance
of permanence. Man is so constituted that he is never aware of
continuous motion. Abrupt variations alone impress his attention.

Forms of government, therefore, are of moment, though not in the manner
commonly supposed. Their value increases in proportion as they permit or
encourage the natural tendency for development to be satisfied.

While Asia has thus furnished an example of the effects of a national
organization of intellect, Europe, on a smaller scale, has presented an
illustration of the same kind. [Sidenote: A similar example in the case
of Italy.] The papal