"While all other sciences have advanced, that of government is at a standstill - little better understood, little better practiced now than three or four thousand years ago"
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Adams contrasts the spectacular gains of the natural sciences with the stubborn stagnation of political understanding. Telescopes, mathematics, and medicine had leapt forward in his lifetime, yet rulers and citizens seemed to repeat the same old mistakes recorded by Greeks and Romans. The claim is not mere nostalgia for antiquity but a diagnosis: government deals with human passions, ambition, and fear, elements that do not change with technology. Unlike physics, where controlled experiments yield cumulative knowledge, politics rarely allows clean tests; every regime is a one-off experiment, distorted by factional interests, war, and contingency, and the lessons are contested by the winners and the losers.
The lament reflects the world Adams knew. He had studied Polybius, Cicero, and Tacitus and watched the French Revolution abandon constitutional safeguards for abstract ideals, ending in terror and empire. He saw how enthusiasm for pure democracy could dissolve into faction and strongman rule, just as classical histories warned. For him, the path to improvement lay not in revolutionizing human nature but in designing institutions that blunt its excesses: mixed government, separation of powers, bicameral legislatures, independent courts, and steady law. Progress in politics, if it comes at all, is incremental and architectural, not utopian.
There is also a moral edge. People mistake technological advance for political wisdom, assuming that new machines imply new virtues. Adams urges humility. Without civic education, restraints on power, and habits of compromise, prosperity and knowledge can amplify vice as easily as they elevate virtue. His skepticism is not despair but a caution that self-government must be engineered and maintained against perennial temptations. The American experiment, as he saw it, tried to translate ancient insights into durable form. Whether that experiment advances depends less on novelty than on whether institutions and citizens can remember what history keeps trying to teach and refuse to forget it when it becomes inconvenient.
The lament reflects the world Adams knew. He had studied Polybius, Cicero, and Tacitus and watched the French Revolution abandon constitutional safeguards for abstract ideals, ending in terror and empire. He saw how enthusiasm for pure democracy could dissolve into faction and strongman rule, just as classical histories warned. For him, the path to improvement lay not in revolutionizing human nature but in designing institutions that blunt its excesses: mixed government, separation of powers, bicameral legislatures, independent courts, and steady law. Progress in politics, if it comes at all, is incremental and architectural, not utopian.
There is also a moral edge. People mistake technological advance for political wisdom, assuming that new machines imply new virtues. Adams urges humility. Without civic education, restraints on power, and habits of compromise, prosperity and knowledge can amplify vice as easily as they elevate virtue. His skepticism is not despair but a caution that self-government must be engineered and maintained against perennial temptations. The American experiment, as he saw it, tried to translate ancient insights into durable form. Whether that experiment advances depends less on novelty than on whether institutions and citizens can remember what history keeps trying to teach and refuse to forget it when it becomes inconvenient.
Quote Details
| Topic | Justice |
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