Commerce and liberty; liberty and refinement; refinement and the progress of the human spirit were all interrelated.
“It is impossible for the arts and sciences to arise, at first, among any people unless that people enjoy the blessing of a free government.”
Liberty was a fine thing, but it required a counterbalancing principle—something to remind us that human beings are creatures of their passions and that, left entirely to themselves, they become their passions’ slaves.
“In all governments,” Hume wrote, “there is a perpetual intestine struggle, open or secret, between Authority and Liberty, and neither of them can ever absolutely prevail in the contest.”
Authority that is absolute and uncontrolled ends by destroying society itself;
Source: How the Scots invented the Modern World: the true story of how western Europe's poorest nation created our world & everything in it (2001) by Arthur Herman.
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