Nevertheless, "as the heavens are high above the earth, so is wisdom above
folly." Goethe compares life to a game at whist, where the cards are dealt
out by destiny, and the rules of the game are fixed: subject to these
conditions, the players are left to win or lose, according to their skill
or want of skill. The life of a nation, like the life of a man, may be
prolonged in honor into the fulness of its time, or it may perish
prematurely, for want of guidance, by violence or internal disorders. And
thus the history of national revolutions is to statesmanship what the
pathology of disease is to the art of medicine. The physician cannot
arrest the coming on of age. Where disease has laid hold upon the
constitution he cannot expel it. But he may check the progress of the evil
if he can recognize the symptoms in time. He can save life at the cost of
an unsound limb. He can tell us how to preserve our health when we have
it; he can warn us of the conditions under which particular disorders will
have us at disadvantage. And so with nations: amidst the endless variety
of circumstances there are constant phenomena which give notice of
approaching danger; there are courses of action which have uniformly
produced the same results; and the wise politicians are those who have
learnt from experience the real tendencies of things, unmisled by
superficial differences, who can shun the rocks where others have been
wrecked, or from foresight of what is coming can be cool when the peril is
upon them.
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