There are revolutions in history which may seem, on a superficial view, inconsistent with this law. Our attention, from early childhood, is directed to Greece and Rome; and we are sometimes taught that these two states reached heights which subsequent nations cannot hope to equal, much less surpass. Let me not disparage the triumphs of the ancient mind. The eloquence, the poetry, the philosophy,
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party, Mr. Sumner and his compeers had a grand idea; they had a sentiment of humanity, deepseated in the heart of the people, to sustain them: and they thus went boldly forward, turning neither to the right nor left, to the accomplishment of one of the most transcendently beneficent political undertakings of these modern times.
In a hopeful and well-written oration on the Law of human progress, pronounced before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Union College, Schenectady, on the 25th day of July, 1848, Mr. Sumner, sweeping with an eagle eye over the various social systems of the past, indicates their points of weakness, but still acknowledges the steady march of civilization; and, under the benignant influences of Christianity and the printing-press, ardently anticipates a brighter day for science, art, literature, freedom, and humanity.
Of the anomaly of Greek and Roman civilization, he thus eloquently discourses:--
B. B. Russell, 1874.
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