Asia were never properly nations; or if they were nations with a
mission, they proved false to it--, and count for nothing in the
progressive development of the human race. History has not
recorded their mission, and as far as they are known they have
contributed only to the abnormal development or corruption of
religion and civilization. Despotism is barbaric and abnormal.

The United States, or the American Republic, has a mission, and
is chosen of God for the realization of a great idea. It has
been chosen not only to continue the work assigned to Greece and
Rome, but to accomplish a greater work than was assigned to
either. In art, it will prove false to its mission if it do not
rival Greece; and in science and philosophy, if it do not surpass
it. In the state, in law, in jurisprudence, it must continue and
surpass Rome. Its idea is liberty, indeed, but liberty with law,
and law with liberty. Yet its mission is not so much the
realization of liberty as the realization of the true idea of the
state, which secures at once the authority of the public and the
freedom of the individual--the sovereignty of the people without
social despotism, and individual freedom without anarchy. In
other words, its mission is to bring out in its life the
dialectic union of authority and liberty, of the natural rights
of man and those of society. The Greek and Roman republics
asserted the state to the detriment of individual freedom; modern
republics either do the same, or assert individual freedom to the
detriment of the state. The American republic has been
instituted by Providence to realize the freedom of each with
advantage to the other.

The real mission of the United States is to introduce and