been that the
machinery which proved sufficient in England, where progress was uniform
through several centuries, breaks down when the pace of progress is
increased. An extreme instance is the recent attempt to introduce party
government into Japan, a country just emerging from the feudal stage, an
interesting account of which is given in the _Nineteenth Century_ for
July, 1899. The experiment failed because the clans could not be divided
on questions of political principle. In a greater or less degree that is
the fundamental source of difficulty everywhere; if the representative
machinery produces only sectional delegation the tendency is back
through anarchy to absolutism. Is it not an extraordinary fact, then,
that the vital distinction between representation and delegation is so
universally ignored?

Such is a brief outline of the evolution of human society; however
inadequate it may be, it at least serves to illustrate the truth that
social progress has never been made in the past except when the
principles of organization and leadership have been operative.

+Future Progress.+--As to the ultimate tendency of future progress it
would be pedantry to dogmatize; our task has been the humbler one of
pointing out the means by which progress is to be attained. We have
assumed, however, that there is a separate sphere of collective action
in which government is an instrument for the positive amelioration of
social conditions. We are aware that this conclusion is at variance with
the two extreme schools of modern thought; on the one hand, with the
individualists, who hold that government should only be used for mutual
protection and to keep order; and on the other hand, with the
socialists, who would leave nothing to individual action. Professor
Huxley has reduced the claims of these two schools to absurdity and
impossibility respectively; and we believe that the problem of the
future is to find out that middle course between the anarchy of the one
and the despotism of the other which makes for progress. It seems likely
that the state of society we are approaching will be one in which, while
natural inequalities will be recognized, neither the artificial
inequalities of fanatical individualism nor the artificial equalities of
regimental socialism will be tolerated, and every man will enter the
rivalry of life on terms of an equality of opportunity. This is the
state foreshadowed by Mr. Lester Ward in his "Outlines of Soci