CH. XX.] CONDITIONS OF PB0GBES3. 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 liow, 

 both in historic and in prehistoric times, the European 

 Aryans would seem to have profited by circumstances tend- 

 ing to encourage individuality without weakening concenira- 

 tion. Hence the peculiarly plastic consistency — the fiexibility 

 combined with toughness — of West- Aryan civilization. Hence 

 the European races all possess the capacity of innovating 

 without revolution. The English and the old Eoinaus have 

 exhibited this capacity in the highest degree ; the Spaniards 

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

 toward a despotic regime, have shown themselves partially 

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

 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 " legal fiction," 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 aU 

 innovation by means of this artifice is so strongly rooted in 

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

 vo come, — probably until the millennial victory of that " pure 

 reason " about which sentimental philosophers have prated, 

 but wliich 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 resistanco 

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

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

 this whicli enables changes to be made " constitutionally," or 



