the contrary creed, believing that the tendency of things, on the
whole, is toward improvement, we ought not to forget that there is an
incessant and ever-flowing current of human affairs toward the worse,
consisting of all the follies, all the vices, all the negligences,
indolences, and supinenesses of mankind, which is only controlled, and
kept from sweeping all before it, by the exertions which some persons
constantly, and others by fits, put forth in the direction of good and
worthy objects. It gives a very insufficient idea of the importance of
the strivings which take place to improve and elevate human nature and
life to suppose that their chief value consists in the amount of
actual improvement realized by their means, and that the consequence
of their cessation would merely be that we should remain as we are. A
very small diminution of those exertions would not only put a stop to
improvement, but would turn the general tendency of things toward
deterioration, which, once begun, would proceed with increasingly
rapidity, and become more and more difficult to check, until it
reached a state often seen in history, and in which many large
portions of mankind even now grovel; when hardly any thing short of
superhuman power seems sufficient to turn the tide, and give a fresh
commencement to the upward movement.

These reasons make the word Progress as unapt as the terms Order and
Permanence to become the basis for a classification of the requisites
of a form of government. The fundamental antithesis which these words
express does not lie in the things themselves, so much as in the types
of human character which answer to them. There are, we know, some
minds in which caution, and others in which boldness, predominates; in
some, the desire to avoid imperilling what is already possessed is a
stronger sentiment than that which prompts to improve the old and
acquire new advantages; while there are others who lean the contrary