AN IMPERIAL INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE 679 



that are enough to repulse the weak and worthless character 

 confirm, corroborate and, it may be, exasperate the energy that 

 is necessary to work and to success. Just clench your fist, and 

 feel the muscles of your forearm while you do so ; you will 

 find that in the act not only the flexor muscles that bend your 

 fingers are at work, but also the extensor muscles which are their 

 antagonists. 



To grasp the handle of a weapon the antagonism of your 

 extensor muscles is as necessary as is the action of your flexor 

 muscles. Firmness is a result of the co-operative antagonism of 

 opposing forces. The strong measure requires an effective 

 opposition as well as a powerful ministry ; and so, if we must 

 be fretted by opposition and criticism, let us be fretted and 

 irritated and strengthened to justify the faith that moves us, 

 rather than daunted and discouraged by the peculiar difficulties 

 that seem to have gathered in our special path, and to be our 

 special misfortune. And when we stumble, let us stiffen our- 

 selves in the knowledge that a stumbling-block surmounted is a 

 stepping-stone in an upward path. 



The Conservative Principle and the Progressive Principle. — 

 There are two great principles involved in the welfare of every 

 living thing — of every organised mass — whether man or nation, 

 trade or profession or art or science, church or college or 

 university — namely, the conservative principle and the pro- 

 gressive principle — the principle of imitation and of obedience 

 and of heredity — the opposite principle of initiation. 



Imitation and Initiation. — Any organised living mass — be it a 

 single animal or an organised body of men — by virtue of the 

 conservative principle of heredity, of repetition of like by like, 

 of imitation of action that has achieved success, of obedience to 

 custom that has survived — works at smaller cost than if each 

 individual organism had perforce to work out afresh its own 

 salvation, evolve by itself its own fittingness in the service and 

 mastery of its surroundings. 



But the child that can only imitate and repeat the actions of 

 its parents and teachers contributes nothing to the excellence 

 of the family and of the nation and of the race. The upward 

 progress of each and every community requires the costly 

 flame of initiative and discovery and invention, the burnt- 



