XL.] HABIT AND VARIATION IN HISTORY. 179 



of society, and of every product of human activity con- 

 tinued through successive generations ; though it is not 

 necessarily true of the product of the activity of a solitary 

 worker or thinker. This truth is a result of the funda- 

 mental truth, that habit is variable, but only gradually so. 

 All the historical researches of the last half-century tend 

 to show, more and more clearly, the continuity of all Continuity 

 history, and the impossibility of any progTess which is and"'' °^^' 

 not gradual. Destructive changes, no doubt, may be gradual- 

 sudden, and so may death ; but constructive changes must political 

 take place under the laws of life, and must be gradual, g™^^'tli' 



, , . n ' are conse- 



because they mvolve, or consist in, changes of habit. It quences of 

 has been said, with a basis of truth, though with much Ijab/t^^^ "* 

 exaggeration, that 



" A thousand years scarce serve to form a state, 

 A day may lay it in tlie dust." i 



Constructive changes cannot be at once profound and 

 sudden ; when they are unquestionably sudden and appear 

 to be profound, as in the revolutions which we have lately 

 witnessed in Italy and in Germany, their profundity can 

 only be tested by the durability of the result ; and if it stands 

 this test, we may be sure that such a revolution, however 

 sudden it may seem, has been prej^ared for by a gradual 

 change in the minds of men. It is indeed a commonplace 

 that all political change, if it is to be durable and safe, 

 must be gradual ; that constitutions must develop them- 

 selves, and must take time to do so. This is a consequence 

 of the law of the gradual variability of habit ; and in 

 speaking of political or constitutional growth or develop- 

 ment, men almost unconsciously use a metaphor taken 

 from the science of life. 



We thus see that the law of the gradual variability of Gradual 

 habit is that which underlies the analogous facts of organic of ])'!|['|['*'^ 

 morphology, of language, of the history of art, and of in mor- 

 political history. fangufge, 



These analogies are very wide and general. I now go fl"*' ^"^ 



I ■, . n -1 history. 



on to the subject of a remarkable special analogy, also 



1 Byron. 

 N 2 



