274 COSMIC FHILOSOFHY. [ft. ii. 



fact that tlie individual career of the Mede was prescribed 

 by unvarying tradition, while the maxim upon which the 

 Athenian implicitly acted was La carriere ouverte aux talents. 



These are some of the military advantages of Mr. Bagehot's 

 " age of discussion." But in truth they are advantages which 

 do not belong exclusively to any age or to any epoch of 

 development, but are operative at all times, though in dif- 

 ferent ages and communities their action is diversely com- 

 plicated with the action of the opposite advantages previously 

 considered. Mr. Bagehot's error — if it be real and not merely 

 apparent — ^lies in describing as purely successive circum- 

 stances which must have been in great degree simultaneous. 

 The "strict dilemma of early society" is not that the fetters 

 of tyrannical custom must first be riveted and afterwards 

 unriveted, but that they must be riveted and unriveted at 

 the same time in communities which are destined to attain 

 to permanent progressiveness. On the one hand we have 

 seen that primitive societies in which uniformity of belief 

 and practice is most sternly enforced, will prevail in the 

 struggle for life. On the other hand we have seen that 

 primitive societies in which flexibility of mind is most 

 encouraged, will come out uppermost. And herein lies the 

 seeming dilemma or contradiction. 



In reality, however, as the whole question is one of war- 

 fare, so it is practically a struggle for life between these two 

 principles. Into the numberless combinations of circum- 

 stances which have given the victory now to one side and 

 now to the other, we cannot inquire, from lack of historical 

 data. On general grounds we may admit that, at the outset, 

 uniformity must have been a more important possession than 

 flexibility ; we can plainly see how those communities that 

 conquered by means of uniformity became caught,- as it 

 were, in their own toils, and were estopped from further 

 progression; and we can see how those communities that 

 won the day by preserving a modicum of flexibility have 



