The comparison of the life of political bodies to that of individuals was long ago rightly rejected as vicious by Volney (_Leçons d'Histoire_, 1794, 6ième Séance), who insisted that political destruction occurred only through vices of polity, inasmuch as all polities have been framed with one of the three intentions of _increasing_, _maintaining_, or _overthrowing_. The explanation is obscure, but the negation of the old formula is just. The issue was taken up and pronounced upon to the same effect in the closing chapter of C.A. Walckenaer's _Essai sur l'histoire de l'espèce humaine_, 1798. (Professor Flint, in his _History of the Philosophy of History_, cites Walckenaer, but does not mention Volney's _Leçons_.) Le Play, in modern times, has put the truth clearly and strongly: "At no epoch of its history is a people fatally doomed either to progress or decline. It does not necessarily pass, like an individual, from youth to old age" (cited by H. Higgs in _American Quarterly Journal of Economics_, July, 1890, p. 428). It is to be regretted that Dr. Draper should have adhered to the fallacy of the necessary decay and death of nations in his suggestive work on the _Intellectual Development of Europe_ (ed. 1875, i, 13-20; ii, 393-98). He was doubtless influenced by the American tendency to regard Europe and Asia as groups of "old countries." The word "decay" may of course be used with the implication of mere "sickness," as by Lord Mahon in the opening sentence of his _Life of Belisarius_; but even in that use it gives a lead to fallacy.