Tfie Result 207 



ciated have not always been clearly seen by me. 

 I began with a much simpler programme and 

 strove to put progress into fewer categories by 

 measuring it through the initial stages of the 

 dynamic movements with which young na- 

 tions start. Here, I thought, is the normal phe- 

 nomena, and all else represents some past 

 influence no longer active. Free life from its 

 restrictions, and we have a pleasure economy 

 and a normal order of progress. The natural 

 curve of thought would move from concrete 

 economic events upward to its highest forms. 

 Nothing is real progress which does not form 

 a part of this curve. 



But this rigid concept to which I so persist- 

 ently held overlooks the influence of heredity. 

 At length I saw that after economic epochs cease 

 to exist, they live in the mental life they have 

 created. Character, in the sense of inherited 

 traits, has its curve of thought with as strong 

 and clear an outline as that which marks the 

 stress of economic conditions. Thought, I then 

 said, has two curves, and nothing is normal 

 until it reveals the movements of both. A pic- 

 ture of English civilization I assumed to be 



