CH. XX.] CONDITIONS OF PROGEESS, 267 



rend'^^ed it easier to ensure concerted action among men lay 

 compelling all to act in conformity to some unchangeable 

 rule. 



In short, among numerous tribal groups of primitive men, 

 those will prevail in the struggle for existence in which 

 the lawless tendencies of individuals are most thoroughly 

 subordinated by the yoke of tyrannical custom, — the only 

 yoke which uncivilized men can be made to wear. Such 

 communities will grow at the expense of tribes that are 

 less law-abiding. It matters comparatively little, as Mr. 

 Bagehot says, whether the tyrant custom be intrinsically 

 good or bad : the great thing, at first, is to subject men's 

 individualities to a system of common habits. Mr. Mill has 

 complained, in his wotk on " Liberty " and elsewhere, that 

 one of the characteristics of modern civilization is the dis- 

 appearance of strongly-marked individualities, such as we 

 find in mediaeval and in ancient civilization. But surely 

 he is quite mistaken in this, — and his mistake arises 

 partly from neglect of the circumstance that in ancient 

 and in feudal times the full manifestation of one powerful 

 individuality was achieved only through tlie utter sinking 

 of many weaker individualities, and partly from the fallacy 

 of taking the unparalleled community of Athens as a type 

 of ancient communities in general Surely in no previous 

 age has there been anything like so wide a scope for the 

 manifestation of strongly-marked individuality of thought 

 or character as in the present age. It would, indeed, be 

 hardly too much to say that this is the first age in human 

 history which has given us a realizing foretaste of the 

 time when freedom of thought and freedom of action shall 

 not only be acknowledged as a right but insisted upon as 

 a duty for all men. But this is due to the fact that men's 

 natures have, through long ages of social discipline, be- 

 come in some degree adapted to the social state. This 

 relatively free recogniticn of idiosyncrasies in tliought or 



