xi SOCIAL DEVELOPMENTS 227 



devious paths, and of this we can now in a general way 

 appreciate the reason. True social co-operation as here 

 understood involves a reconciliation or synthesis of condi- 

 tions which in all but their most refined form are opposed 

 to one another. The strength of the blood tie that gives 

 vigour to a barbaric clan, that vitalises the tenderness of 

 natural affection within its limits, maintains a personal and 

 a common pride which is also the source of its warlike 

 prowess. To hate the enemies of the clan is at this stage 

 simply the other side of love for the clan itself. The 

 spontaneous growth of each group means war between the 

 groups. If a higher power imposes peace upon them, 

 there is gain in industry and the ways of peace at the cost 

 perhaps of the vital energy which could only flourish in 

 independence. History is full of such exchanges, in which 

 loss and gain seem almost evenly balanced. To take a 

 single instance. The free Roman Republic had become a 

 corrupt and turbulent oligarchy, wholly incapable of 

 administering the vast dominions it had conquered. The 

 new empire was efficient, and it was equalitarian in ten- 

 dency. It gave a great part of the world peace and civilised 

 law, and by degrees equality in citizenship. There was 

 great gain here to counterbalance the loss of Roman free- 

 dom, and yet we may think that the loss of freedom meant 

 ultimately the loss of life. It is perhaps superfluous to 

 multiply examples. Throughout history an advance in 

 one direction is affected at the cost of loss in another. In 

 particular the growth of Authority, valuable for order, 

 stability, industrial progress and some forms of intellectual 

 development, is often correlated with the most serious 

 ethical retrogression. It is only in the fullness of develop- 

 ment that the movement becomes harmonious, because it is 

 only then that it is recognised that the full and true mean- 

 ing of any form of human activity is to be found in its 

 contribution to the whole, and accordingly not in the 

 repression but in the furtherance of other forms of human 

 endeavour. 



Looking now over social development as a whole, we 

 can see a nuch closer correspondence in the net movement 

 than in the stages that make up that movement in each case. 



