THE NEED FOR ADAPTATION 9 



of energy resulted in a far vaster and more sudden 

 change of physical environment than a mere geo- 

 graphical alteration, and its effect on human nature 

 have been more immediate and universal than could 

 be produced by any local migrations in themselves. 

 The change is the more immediate and complete, as 

 one generation succeeds another, among those upon 

 whom the struggle for existence presses the more 

 directly. It began at the bottom with the unskilled 

 labourer. It is resisted the more strenuously, and 

 for the time the more effectively, in accordance as an 

 accumulation of wealth, interests or privileges serves 

 to protect the resister from the natural consequences 

 of being out of tune with his environment, or endear 

 him to the conditions which are changing. 



In such resistance is to be found the explanation 

 of the disquieting fact that the vast social recon- 

 struction everywhere in progress is volcanic rather 

 than a normal healthy growth. There is scarcely a 

 social change of any consequence which has not, like 

 the right of combination of labour, taken its origin 

 and assumed strength from below, and burst through 

 the resistance offered to it from above. After having 

 been denounced as anti-social, it is, in due course, 

 welcomed and universally adopted by official and 

 orthodox circles, so soon as the further progress of 

 the movement has made it appear as the least of 

 inevitable evils. Even the nationalisation of rail- 

 ways, land, and the sources of wealth, the conscrip- 

 tion of capital, and all the rank heresies of a little 

 while ago, are now receiving serious consideration. 

 Perhaps most significant of all such ideas is that 

 of the international co-operative labour movement 

 against war. 



This movement is a remarkable instance of how 

 the forces compelling change find expression, in 

 spite of the most innate traditions, such as patriotism 



