178 ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 



of social evolution. Writing before Weismann, he believed with 

 most biologists of his day in the inheritance of acquired charac- 

 ters although this doctrine is not essential to his argument. 1 He 

 accepted in general the theory of Sir Henry Maine as to the earli- 

 est historic form of the family and state, — the patriarchal, — 

 but he also accepted the conclusions of Bachofen, McLennan, 

 and Lubbock, as to an earlier stage when loose sexual relations 

 reigned along with " mutterrecht." 2 



The first problem of primitive times, as Bagehot sees it, is to 

 get law, order, polity, — "a polity first — what sort of polity is 

 immaterial; a law first — what kind of law is secondary; a 

 person or set of persons to pay deference to — though who he is, 

 or they are, by comparison scarcely signifies." 3 Despotism and 

 slavery were thus angels in disguise, for they were the means of 

 disciplining the impulsiveness of primitive man. But the nation 

 that went too far in its legalism and its conservatism, cutting off 

 all innovators and innovation, was doomed. 4 



The two essentials to social as well as biological success are, 

 then, stability and variation, social stability resulting from imita- 

 tion, — mostly unconscious, — and elimination of the disuseful; 6 

 social variation resulting from invention and free discussion. 6 



Bagehot wisely discriminates between the process of race mak- 

 ing (confined mostly to prehistoric times), and that of nation 

 making, a modern phenomenon. 7 



As the importance of imitation will be discussed later, we will 

 consider here only the factors of discussion and animated modera- 

 tion, which are his original contributions to sociology. Having 

 shown the necessity of custom and custom-imitation together 

 with the danger of over-conservatism, he says: " The change 

 from the age of status to the age of choice was first made in states 

 where the government was to a great and a growing extent a gov- 

 ernment by discussion, and where the subjects of that discussion 



1 Physics and Politics, pp. 7, 8. 4 Ibid., ch. II. 



2 Ibid., pp. 12, 122 f. 6 Ibid., pp. 92, 103. 



3 Ibid., pp. 50, 64, 137. 6 Ibid., pp. 65 f., 156 f. 



7 Ibid., pp. 86, 136. " If we look at the earliest monuments of the human 

 race, we find these race-characters as decided as the race-characters now," ibid., 

 p. 107. 



