"Nations, like men, have their infancy"
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The analogy treats a nation as a living creature whose earliest years shape its character, capacities, and vulnerabilities. Infancy suggests dependence, malleability, and the rapid formation of habits. For a people, those early habits are the institutions, myths, laws, and civic practices that define what will later feel like a nation’s second nature. Just as the lessons and caretakers of childhood can foster strength or stunt growth, the founding choices of statesmen, the quality of public education, and the temper of early laws can either cultivate civic virtue or entrench vice.
Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke, wrote as an early 18th-century British statesman steeped in classical history and Enlightenment concerns. He urged leaders to study history as a practical school of prudence, and he often read the rise of Rome and other republics as moral case studies. The image of infancy fits his broader view that political communities pass through stages: they are born out of contingencies, grow through hard-won discipline, and can decay through luxury and faction. He feared that corruption, party spirit, and financialized politics would warp Britain’s development, and he advocated a patriot king and balanced constitution to guide the nation’s growth toward maturity rather than senescence.
If infancy implies plasticity, it also implies responsibility. Founders and early legislators are like tutors who fix the habits a nation will find hard to unlearn. The first stories a people tell about themselves become guiding myths; the first compromises crystallize into constitutional norms; the first uses of power teach what power is for. Bolingbroke’s line also counsels patience and proportion: do not demand from a young commonwealth the steadiness of an old one, and do not mistake the vigor of youth for the wisdom of maturity. In modern terms, postrevolutionary or newly independent states need less miraculous expectations and more careful nurturing of institutions, civic education, and moderate leadership, because early errors echo for generations.
Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke, wrote as an early 18th-century British statesman steeped in classical history and Enlightenment concerns. He urged leaders to study history as a practical school of prudence, and he often read the rise of Rome and other republics as moral case studies. The image of infancy fits his broader view that political communities pass through stages: they are born out of contingencies, grow through hard-won discipline, and can decay through luxury and faction. He feared that corruption, party spirit, and financialized politics would warp Britain’s development, and he advocated a patriot king and balanced constitution to guide the nation’s growth toward maturity rather than senescence.
If infancy implies plasticity, it also implies responsibility. Founders and early legislators are like tutors who fix the habits a nation will find hard to unlearn. The first stories a people tell about themselves become guiding myths; the first compromises crystallize into constitutional norms; the first uses of power teach what power is for. Bolingbroke’s line also counsels patience and proportion: do not demand from a young commonwealth the steadiness of an old one, and do not mistake the vigor of youth for the wisdom of maturity. In modern terms, postrevolutionary or newly independent states need less miraculous expectations and more careful nurturing of institutions, civic education, and moderate leadership, because early errors echo for generations.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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