migration, by blood
admixture, or by other exterior or interior occurrences, which would
involve a corresponding change in the national characteristics and
duration; perhaps result in the rapid and total disappearance of the
community.

For--and this brings us to the last point of analogy which Professor
Draper gives between individual and national life--nations, like
individuals, die. Empires are only sandhills in the hourglass of Time;
they crumble spontaneously away by the process of their own growth.

'A nation, like a man, hides from itself the contemplation of its
final day. It occupies itself with expedients for prolonging its
present state. It frames laws and constitutions under the delusion
that they will last, forgetting that the condition of life is
change. Very able modern statesmen consider it to be the grand
object of their art to keep things as they are, or rather as they
were. But the human race is not at rest; and bands with which, for
a moment, it may be restrained, break all the more violently the
longer they hold. No man can stop the march of destiny. * * * The
origin, existence, and death of nations depend thus on physical
influences, which are themselves the result of immutable laws.
Nations are only transitional forms of humanity. They must undergo
obliteration as do the transitional forms offered by the animal
series. There is no more an immortality for an embryo in any one of
the manifold forms passed through in its progress of development.

'We must, therefore, no longer regard nations or groups of men as
offering a permanent picture. Human affairs must be looked upon as
in continuous movement, not wandering in an arbitrary manner here
and there, but proceeding in a perfectly definite course. Whatever
may be the present state, it is altogether transient. All systems
of civil life are therefore necessarily ephemeral. Time brings new
conditions; the manner of thought is modified; with thought,
action. Institutions of all kinds must hence participate in this
fleeting nature; and, though they may have allied themselves to
political power, and gathered therefrom the means of coercion,
their permanency is but little improved thereby; for, sooner or
later, the population on whom they have been imposed, following the
external variations, spontaneously outgrows th