2 CO POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



Intrusions will ordinarily succeed only where the intruding 

 citizens have more than usual aptitudes for the businesses 

 they undertake. Those who desert their original functions, 

 are at a disadvantage in the competition with those whose 

 functions they assume; and they can overcome this disad 

 vantage only by force of some superiority : must do the new 

 tiling better than those born to it, and so tend to improve 

 the doing of it by their example. This leaving of men to 

 have their careers determined by their efficiencies, we may 

 therefore call the principle of change in social organization. 



As we saw that succession by inheritance conduces in a 

 secondary way to stability, by keeping authority in the hands 

 of those who by age are made most averse to new practices, 

 so here, conversely, we may see that succession by efficiency 

 conduces in a secondary way to change. Both positively and 

 negatively the possession of power by the young facilitates 

 innovation. While the energies are overflowing, little fear is 

 felt of those obstacles to improvement and evils it may bring, 

 which, when energies are failing, look formidable ; and at the 

 same time the greater imaginativeness that goes along with 

 higher vitality, joined with a smaller strength of habit, facili 

 tates acceptance of fresh ideas and adoption of untried 

 methods. Since, then, where the various social positions come 

 to be respectively filled by those who are experimentally 

 proved to be the fittest, the relatively young are permitted to 

 exercise authority, it results that succession by efficiency 

 furthers change in social organization, indirectly as well as 

 directly. 



Contrasting the two, we thus see that while the acquire 

 ment of function by inheritance conduces to rigidity of struc 

 ture, the acquirement of function by efficiency conduces to 

 plasticity of structure. Succession by descent favours the 

 maintenance of that which exists. Succession by fitness 

 favours transformation, and makes possible something better. 



446. As was pointed out in 228, &quot;complication of 



