Love the quote. I did check on Edinburgh web site and found the following. From the of Edinburgh web site inquiries. http://www.lib.ed.ac.uk/faqs/parqsqtt.shtml#Aftytler1 Tytler, Alexander Fraser (Lord Woodhouselee) Do you have in print or electronic form something called The decline and fall of the Athenian Republic (1776) by a supposed Edinburgh University History Professor Alexander Fraser Tytler (Lord Woodhouselee)? I've heard of a quotation by Alexander Fraser Tytler about the lifespan of democracy. Was it in The decline and fall of the Athenian Republic? Edinburgh University Library occasionally receives enquiries, particularly from North America, about this particular work. However, this title is not in our Library holdings, nor does it appear in the stocks of the other major research libraries in the UK (according to the 'union' catalogue COPAC)... Locally, the chapters of Tytler's General history ... (which we DO have) has been checked on the off-chance that The decline and fall might have been a chapter title... but it is not... Clarifying a bit more, the earliest published works of Tytler that we have are: Plan and outlines of a course of lectures on universal history, ancient and modern, delivered in the University of Edinburgh. Edinburgh, 1782. Note: Presentation copy from the author. Elements of general history, ancient and modern. To which are added a table of chronology and a comparative view of ancient and modern geography. 2 vols. Edinburgh, 1801. Note: Presentation copy from the author. The two volume work is a published version of the lecture course outlined in the plan. The publication situation is a bit complicated by later editions of the lectures, sometimes with an additional volume by different other authors bringing the coverage up to 1820 and later the 1840s and 1850s. Additionally we hold bundles of unsorted, or comparatively unsorted manuscripts of Tytler. Often in the enquiries we receive we are provided with a 'quote' (see below) from Tytler referring to the steps that a democracy can go thro' prior to its fall but this is not in the General history... either. We have scanned our holdings pretty thoroughly on different occasions, going back a few years now, but we have not found the quotation or anything similar to it, but we cannot absolutely rule out the possibility that we have missed it. With regard to the 'quote', the Library of Congess which has a substantial collection of Alexander Fraser Tytler, and has experience of working with his output, also confirms that it is not in the General history. In Soldiers of fortune. The story of the Mamlukes by John Bagot Glubb 'Pasha' (1897-1986), published in New York by Stein and Day, 1973, Glubb gives an unattributed reference to stages in the 'life of democracy', stating p.230 that the words were written by Alexander Fraser Tytler but providing no source. By his own admission however, on p.9, Glubb was not a scholar. [Quote]...: A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government ... The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, and from dependency back into bondage.