No individual, no country, no people, no history of a nation, no state is like another; hence the true, the beautiful, and the good in them are not alike either. Each nation has its centre of happiness within itself, as every ball has its centre of gravity.
Humanity is the character of our kind; but it is given to us only as a disposition, and must be formed. We do not bring it ready-made into the world; in the world it must become the goal of our striving, the sum of our exercises, our guiding value.
One chain of culture, drawn through all the ages, links nation to nation; and history is not a theatre of blind forces, but the natural history of human powers unfolding according to place, time, and character.
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