2i6 The Morality of Nature 



with many equal leaders. Then, only the persistence of 

 habit maintains the form already established, by the promo- 

 tion of that leader comparatively best, or presumed to be 

 best, or the one strongest and most ambitious; and he con- 

 tinues to exercise authority of that same despotic character 

 which he feels and believes to be moral, but he exercises it in 

 relations where its morality no longer has the same physical 

 basis in the same degree as of old. It is true that in a lesser 

 degree consanguinity makes a governor more fit and accepta- 

 ble. Experience and history clearly show the normal right- 

 ness of racial sympathy between a people and their kings 

 or priests or leaders. But the wrongness which appears as 

 this stage enlarges, can be seen to consist in its emergence 

 from the scope of all that real superiority which made 

 partriarchal despotism beneficial. Parental authority has 

 then not disappeared ; it remains autocratic and yet moral, as 

 before, but only as before in its limited sphere. The tribal 

 unit of conduct enlarging into a nation has become too 

 diversified for that method of government, and it fails to 

 secure unity of action. 



But the evolution of higher modes of co-operation is 

 shown by history to be a slow and painful process of experi- 

 mental variation and survival. The perception of a new way 

 of beneficent rightness may come to the wisest and the most 

 sympathetic minds soon after the need appears, but it is not 

 available until the greater number and greater forces of all 

 those concerned come to believe in it, and it is not stable 

 and efifective until such a majority has it so rooted in 

 experience and heredity that the belief is natural and 

 instinctive. 



