the essentials of our institutions, I for one could not be a progressive.

* * * * *

One of the chief benefits I used to derive from being president of a
university was that I had the pleasure of entertaining thoughtful men from
all over the world. I cannot tell you how much has dropped into my granary
by their presence. I had been casting around in my mind for something by
which to draw several parts of my political thought together when it was
my good fortune to entertain a very interesting Scotsman who had been
devoting himself to the philosophical thought of the seventeenth century.
His talk was so engaging that it was delightful to hear him speak of
anything, and presently there came out of the unexpected region of his
thought the thing I had been waiting for. He called my attention to the
fact that in every generation all sorts of speculation and thinking tend
to fall under the formula of the dominant thought of the age. For example,
after the Newtonian Theory of the universe had been developed, almost all
thinking tended to express itself in the analogies of the Newtonian
Theory, and since the Darwinian Theory has reigned amongst us, everybody
is likely to express whatever he wishes to expound in terms of development
and accommodation to environment.

Now, it came to me, as this interesting man talked, that the Constitution
of the United States had been made under the dominion of the Newtonian
Theory. You have only to read the papers of _The Federalist_ to see that
fact written on every page. They speak of the "checks and balances" of
the Constitution, and use to express their idea the simile of the
organization of the universe, and particularly of the solar system,--how
by the attraction of gravitation the various parts are held in their
orbits; and then they proceed to represent Congress, the Judiciary, and