Walter Bagehot: “Rome and Sparta were drilling aristocracies, and succeeded because they were such.”

Now it is not conceivable that a race of beings with valuable instincts supporting their existence and supplying their wants would need these simple tools.

The power of free interchange of ideas being wanting, the ideas themselves were barren.

Savages waste away before modern civilisation; they seem to have held their ground before the ancient.

Thirdly, we see why so few nations have made rapid advance, and how many have become stationary.