r on closer
examination, if not already shown, to be this: _that the principle of
Unity and the principle of Individuality must everywhere be represented
in proximately equal proportions, in order to effect a just balance of
conditions and to secure practical harmony_. Centralization and freedom
must everywhere coexist, and be equally operative. Conservatism is as
important to society as progress. Conservatism overbalancing progress,
destroys society by stagnation, blotting out the individuality of the
person and moulding men into machine-like uniformity; progress
preponderating over conservatism, destroys the community by disrupting
bands of association before new methods are sufficiently understood, and
giving reins to a liberty whose untutored use can end only in anarchy
and unbridled license. Conservatism and progress, the centripetal and
centrifugal forces of society, each being equally balanced, will result
in a harmonization of social interests that will cause community to move
on its career as evenly as the planet moves in its graceful orbit. So
in every other department, wherever these opposite principles are
equally adjusted by allowing each full play, there results perfect
consonance and peace. Order and freedom in government; unity and liberty
in church; individuality and mutuality in society; these are the
elements, when alike operative, of security and success in their
respective domains, in individual and social life.

To secure the highest state of civilization, it is therefore essential
that there should be an equal activity of the intellectual and of the
moral or (as they may be more appropriately called) the religious
faculties: religion being, in its broadest sense, devotion--arising from
a conscientious feeling of duty or obligation--to that which appears to
the individual as the highest truth; and the faculties which are active
in the exercise of this devotion being the moral or religious ones.
Viewed as a question of abstract science merely, the investigation might
be arrested at this point, with the conclusion that intellectual and
moral agencies were both indispensible to the progress of humanity, and
the right relations of society, and, therefore, equally important
elements of social advancement. Additional proof will be given
incidentally, however, of this general truth, in the consideration of
the special case of the relative value of these agencies in the past
progress of the nations.

It