text:  They forget that all nations were not planted at the same time nor in the same soil; that the difference in their age the inequality in their growth the variety in their texture is as great as in the trees of the forest the seeds of which have been scattered by the hand of nature; that the incessant warfare of the weaker with the stronger exists not less in the social than the physical world; and that all systems founded on the oblivion of that continued contest must ever be traversed by the strongest of all moral laws--the instinct of SELF-PRESERVATION