A great thought was there, but not the kindly impulse to use it.

Then, full 2,000 years passed over our earth.

At last came an era when man's heart journeyed forward with his mind.

Then the woes of miners and the world's burden-bearers filled the ears of James Watt with torment, and his sympathetic heart would not let him stay until he had fashioned his redemptive tool.
For generations, also, the thoughts of liberty waited for the heart to re-enforce them and make them practical in institutions.

Two thousand years before the era of Cromwell and Hampden, Grecian philosophers wrought out a full statement for the republic and individual liberty.
The right of life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness were truths clearly perceived by Plato and Pericles.