Chapter VI · THE RULING INSTITUTION: AS GOVERNMENT (continued 2)

As a result of its careful selection and training of men for society, war, and government, the Ottoman Ruling Institution, allowing for all imperfections of structure, was a very efficient and permanent entity. It was later to endure terrible shocks and losses without destruction; it was to suffer a partial separation of its component institutions into hostile bodies, and to witness serious departures from its rules and principles. But, despite attack from without and disintegration and decay within, it long stood firm; and, together with its dissimilar companion, the Moslem Institution of the Ottoman Empire, it has kept the vital spark of that empire alive for more than two centuries after extinction began to be thought imminent. Even today its abiding spirit gives promise of lighting a new and very different torch, which, having burned away the limitations and imperfections that caused the ruin of the older institution, will yet be the brighter for preserving a democratic faith in the capacity of the able individual, and a disposition to help him forward by education and to trust him with all the responsibility that he is able to bear. Most features of the Ottoman Ruling Institution cannot live in the twentieth century. Despotism, military rule, personal privilege, excessive imperial splendor, proselytism, and slavery have been dethroned in favor of political and religious liberty, equality, fraternity, separation of church and state, and government by the people. But the idea of an education which will develop the individual to the full extent of his capacities is thoroughly modern; and the disposition to entrust high offices to those who, without regard to ancestry, are the ablest, and who become by their own efforts and by carefully supervised training the best equipped, is in advance of the ordinary practice of Western democracies. Herein lies one of the strongest elements of hope for the future of the new Turkey, which may thus preserve continuity with the past.

The Ottoman Ruling Institution, still thus capable of imparting valuable ideas, was in its halcyon days a thing of immense moment in the world. Out of carefully selected but most heterogeneous materials it had built itself up as a firm, strong, and simple structure, which had gathered a chaotic mass of petty states and hostile peoples into a great and, by comparison, a well-governed and durable empire. In the reign of the great Suleiman no human structure existed which equalled this institution in wealth, splendor, power, simplicity and rapidity of action, and respect at home and abroad.