The Project Gutenberg EBook of American Political Ideas Viewed From The
Standpoint Of Universal History, by John Fiske

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Title: American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History

Author: John Fiske

Release Date: November 17, 2003 [EBook #10112]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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AMERICAN POLITICAL IDEAS

VIEWED FROM THE STANDPOINT OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY

Three Lectures

DELIVERED AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTION OF GREAT BRITAIN IN MAY 1880

BY JOHN FISKE

_Voici un fait entierement nouveau dans le monde, et dont l'imagination
elle-meme ne saurait saisir la portee._

TOCQUEVILLE

TO

EDWARD LIVINGSTON YOUMANS

NOBLEST OF MEN AND DEAREST OF FRIENDS

WHOSE UNSELFISH AND UNTIRING WORK IN EDUCATING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE IN
THE PRINCIPLES OF SOUND PHILOSOPHY DESERVES THE GRATITUDE OF ALL MEN

I dedicate this Book

PREFACE.

In the spring of 1879 I gave at the Old South Meeting-house in Boston a
course of lectures on the discovery and colonization of America, and
presently, through the kindness of my friend Professor Huxley, the
course was repeated at University College in London. The lectures there
were attended by very large audiences, and awakened such an interest in
American history that I was invited to return to England in the
following year and treat of some of the philosophical aspects of my
subject in a course of lectures at the Royal Institution.

In the three lectures which were written in response to this invitation,
and which are now published in this little volume, I have endeavoured to
illustrate some of the fundamental ideas of American politics by setting
forth their relations to the general history of mankind. It is
impossible thoroughly to grasp the meaning of any group of facts, in any
department of study, until we have duly compared them with allied groups
of facts; and the political history of the American people can be
rightly understood only when it is studied in connection with that
general process of political evolution w