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An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition by Adam Ferguson
page 257 of 349 (73%)
wisdom; and a people return to their ordinary mood, cured of their follies,
and wiser by experience; or, with talents improved, in conducting the very
scenes which frenzy had opened, they may then appear best qualified to
pursue with success the object of nations. Like the ancient republics,
immediately after some alarming sedition, or like the kingdom of Great
Britain, at the close of its civil wars, they retain the spirit of activity
which was recently awakened, and are equally vigorous in every pursuit,
whether of policy, learning, or arts. From having appeared on the brink of
ruin, they pass to the greatest prosperity.)

Men engage in pursuits with degrees of ardour not proportioned to the
importance of their object. When they are stated in opposition, or joined
in confederacy, they only wish for pretences to act. They forget, in the
heat of their animosities, the subject of their controversy; or they seek,
in their formal reasonings concerning it, only a disguise for their
passions. When the heart is inflamed, no consideration can repress its
ardour; when its fervour subsides, no reasoning can excite, and no
eloquence awaken its former emotions.

The continuance of emulation among states must depend on the degree of
equality by which their forces are balanced; or on the incentives by which
either party, or all, are urged to continue their struggles. Long
intermissions of war, suffer, equally in every period of civil society, the
military spirit to languish. (The reduction of Athens by Lysander, struck a
fatal blow at the institutions of Lycurgus; and the quiet possession of
Italy, happily perhaps for mankind, had almost put an end to the military
progress of the Romans. After some years repose, Hannibal found Italy
unprepared for his onset, and the Romans in a disposition likely to drop,
on the banks of the Po, that martial ambition, which being roused by the
sense of a new danger, afterwards, carried them to the Euphrates and the
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