en. xx.] CONDITIONS OF PBOGEESS. 279 



counter-action was in a high degree conducive to the develop 

 ment of individual liberty of thought and behaviour. 



The various hints here given thus combine to show how, 

 both in historic and in prehistoric times, the European 

 Aryans would seem to have profited by circumstances tend 

 ing to encourage individuality without weakening concentra 

 tion. Hence the peculiarly plastic consistency the flexibility 

 combined with toughness of West- Aryan civilization. Hence 

 the European races all possess the capacity of innovating 

 without revolution. The English and the old Komans have 

 exhibited this capacity in the highest degree ; the Spaniards 

 and the French, in recent times, owing to previous reversion 

 toward a despotic rfyime, have shown themselves partially 

 deprived of it. But while it is thus manifested in quita 

 various degrees, all alike possess it in a high degree as 

 compared with those races which have been arrested in the. 

 Oriental stage of civilization. 



The successful achievement of innovation without revo 

 lution depends mainly upon an artifice which derives its 

 validity from one of the most deep-seated tendencies of the 

 human mind, and which has unquestionably been one of the 

 chief agencies in forwarding social progress. I refer to the 

 artifice of &quot; legal fiction,&quot; as shown in the pretence that the 

 novelty of belief or practice just inaugurated has its warrant 

 in time-honoured precedent. The disposition to justify all 

 innovation by means of this artifice is so strongly rooted in 

 human nature that it is likely to be manifested for a long time 

 to come, probably until the millennial victory of that &quot; pure 

 reason &quot; about which sentimental philosophers have prated, 

 but which hitherto has played a very subordinate part in 

 shaping human affairs. It is this disposition which leads the 

 orthodox, after resisting some scientific heresy until resistance 

 is no longer possible, to discover all at once that the heresy 

 was really taught by Suarez, or St. Augustine, or Moses. It ia 

 this which enables changes to be made &quot; constitutionally,&quot; or 



