CHAP, xii DARWINISM IN POLITICS BAGEHOT 119 



oftenest at work in the service of inherited usage. 

 Here then were the factors of social order custom and 

 imitation. Once the race became political it developed 

 an overwhelming power of conservatism. Custom had 

 made men what they were ; they dimly felt this and 

 worshipped every custom with equal enthusiasm, the 

 worst no less than the best. But indeed isolation was 

 useful in early days. Jealousy of novel or foreign 

 ways was a wise passion while the social type was too 

 weak to bear contact with other types. 



In the way of comment or criticism one need only 

 here remark, that almost everything in this eulogy of 

 custom turns upon Bagehot's theory of the unsocial 

 wildness of the first men, or, as he tends to translate 

 that conception, on the theory that, when man was 

 evolved, instinct went off duty before reason and custom 

 came on duty. Probably that proposition is disputable. 

 And the whole attempt to affirm how reason must have 

 proceeded in entering a world that knew it not is 

 perhaps an attempt to transcend the limits of possible 

 knowledge, more truly so than many things which have 

 been thus described. 



Custom being established, the next question to be 

 faced is, how the cake of custom may be broken and 

 progress inaugurated. Custom, and the rough natural 

 selection of early ages, ensure stability; they are the 

 factors in social statics ; but what are the factors in 

 social dynamics "? For a long time the greatest selecting 

 agency is war. Military nations prevail over those 

 which are less effective upon the field of battle, and to a 

 large extent imitation gradually diffuses the principles 

 of the higher and conquering civilisation among the 

 vanquished. For in a sense the conquering civilisation 

 is higher. Reflection shows us that, up to a certain 



