CONDITIONS OF PROGRESS 



Above all is this true in early communities, 

 for in these later times we have become so far 

 accustomed to variations in belief and practice, 

 and have so far substituted individual for cor- 

 porate responsibility, that there is a great deal 

 of variation which we do not count as heresy, 

 but which formerly would have been regarded 

 as such. Hence in an early community, the en- 

 forcement of absolute uniformity of belief and 

 practice must establish a kind of natural selec- 

 tion tending to weed out all superior flexibil- 

 ity of mind. As a direct result the community 

 closes up a prolific source of military superiority 

 in the shape of individual political and military 

 genius ; for men of the Themistokles type are 

 not produced, as a rule, in such states of soci- 

 ety. The indirect result will be more fully ap- 

 preciated when the next chapter has shown us 

 how closely mental flexibility is implicated with 

 that power of representing objects and relations 

 remote from sense which also underlies the in- 

 valuable power of anticipating future emergen- 

 cies. To weed out superior flexibility of mind 

 is to check further development in forethought 

 or longheadedness, — a truth of which the en- 

 tire history of the Oriental communities, so un- 

 like each other in many respects, is one long 

 and reiterated confirmation. Still further, when 

 we recall the patent fact that the efliciency of any 

 community is measured by the efficiency of its 

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