CONDITIONS OF PROGRESS IN CIVILISATION 349 



custom. The Reformation, an event of which it is difficult 

 to over-rate the magnitude, began with the disinterment of 

 the Bible. Nor has the constant looking back to this pre- 

 vented that adaptation to changed circumstances, which is an 

 essential part of progress. 



But all legislation when it becomes elaborate and attempts to Danger of 

 regulate the lives and the business methods of the citizens is ^^ r f^ c 

 fraught with danger. Laws do not work as their framers ence 

 intended. Even if a law proves beneficial at first, circumstances 

 may change, while the law remains as it was and is no longer a 

 help but a hindrance. Progress, therefore, necessitates further 

 progress if the nation is not to decline. The more complex the 

 life of the nation becomes, the greater the necessity of dealing 

 promptly with new evils as they arise. For England there is no 

 possibility of standing still : she must either move backward or 

 forward. A nation of peasants, if its geographical position 

 protects it from invasion, may long continue on the level to 

 which it has attained, neither rising nor sinking. But when 

 once it begins to advance to a more highly organised civilisation, 

 it must not slacken or degradation will begin. 



We conclude, then, that progress originates from contact with Summary 

 other tribes or nations : war, no less than friendly intercourse, 

 has been essential to progress in the past and there is every 

 reason to believe that, were it not for national rivalry, always 

 involving the possibility of war, stagnation and decline would 

 set in. To prevent decline and promote progress a code is of 

 the utmost importance, a code representing the best aspirations 

 of the nation and round which all that is best in it may rally, 

 when tyranny or accretions of unhealthy custom are strangling 

 the national life. And this code should not be over-elaborate 

 but should allow freedom to later generations to work out each 

 its own system. 



When society has become complex, progress must be com- 

 paratively rapid if decline is not to take its place. 



Civilisation, the evidence shows I quote now the conclusions 

 arrived at in chapters ix. and xii. brings with it physical de- 

 generacy, though the process is much retarded by our hard 



