Accidents rarely happen

In the nation or in your own life.

Charles Montesquieu. Source, Public Domain.

Today (January 18, 2023) is the birthday of the historian and political philosopher Charles Montesquieu (1689–1755).

Montesquieu conceived the political theory of the separation of powers, in which legislative (passing laws), executive (implementing laws), and judicial (enforcing laws)functions are independent of each other. His ideas greatly influenced the form of government established by the United States Constitution.

Montesquieu also had an interesting view of history. In a work called Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and their Decline he wrote:

It is not chance that rules the world. Ask the Romans, who had a continuous sequence of successes when they were guided by a certain plan, and an uninterrupted sequence of reverses when they followed another. There are general causes, moral and physical, which act in every monarchy, elevating it, maintaining it, or hurling it to the ground. All accidents are controlled by these causes. And if the chance of one battle — that is, a particular cause — has brought a state to ruin, some general cause made it necessary for that state to perish from a single battle. In a word, the main trend draws with it all particular accidents.