as we know from the records of authentic history.
Such is the inherent dignity of human nature, that there belong to it
sublimities of virtues which all men may attain, and which no man can
transcend: and though this be not true in an equal degree of
intellectual power, yet in the persons of Plato, Demosthenes, and Homer,
and in those of Shakespeare, Milton, and Lord Bacon, were enshrined as
much of the divinity of intellect as the inhabitants of this planet can
hope will ever take up its abode among them. But the question is not of
the power or worth of individual minds, but of the general moral or
intellectual merits of an age, or a people, or of the human race. Be it
so. Let us allow and believe that there is a progress in the species
towards unattainable perfection, or whether this be so or not, that it
is a necessity of a good and greatly-gifted nature to believe it; surely
it does not follow that this progress should be constant in those
virtues and intellectual qualities, and in those departments of
knowledge, which in themselves absolutely considered are of most value,
things independent and in their degree indispensable. The progress of
the species neither is nor can be like that of a Roman road in a right
line. It may be more justly compared to that of a river, which, both in
its smaller reaches and larger turnings, is frequently forced back
towards its fountains by objects which cannot otherwise be eluded or
overcome; yet with an accompanying impulse that will insure its
advancement hereafter, it is either gaining strength every hour, or
conquering in secret some difficulty, by a labour that contributes as
effectually to further it in its course, as when it moves forward
uninterrupted in a line, direct as that of the Roman road with which I
began the comparison.

It suffices to content the mind, though there may be an apparent
stagnation, or a retrograde movement in the species, that something is
doing which is necessary to be done, and the effects of which will in
due time appear; that something is unremittingly gaining, either in
secret preparation or in open and triumphant progress. But in fact here,
as every where, we are deceived by creations which the mind is compelled
to make for itself; we speak of the species not as an aggregate, but as
endued with the form and separate life of an individual. But human
kind,--what is it else than myriads of rational beings in various
degrees obedient to their reason