ideas monastic communities have flourished, in comparison with whose
demands upon human nature the change required by socialism--so far as it
calls for purer altruism and not pure economic folly--is trivial. To any
one who asserts as a dogma that "human nature never changes," it is fair
to reply, "It is human nature to change itself."

When one reflects to what extent racial and national traits are manners
of the mind, fixed by social rather than by physical heredity, while the
bodily characters themselves may be due in no small measure to sexual
choices at first experimental, then imitative, then habitual, one is not
disposed to think lightly of the human capacity for self-modification.
But it is still possible to be skeptical as to the depth and permanence
of any changes which are genuinely voluntary. There are few maxims of
conduct, and few laws so contrary to nature that they could not be put
into momentary effect by individuals or by communities. Plato's Republic
has never been fairly tried; but fragments of this and other Utopias
have been common enough in history. No one presumes to limit what men
can _attempt_; one only inquires what the silent forces are which
determine what can _last_.

What, to be explicit, is the possible future of measures dealing with
divorce, with war, with political corruption, with prostitution, with
superstition? Enthusiastic idealism is too precious an energy to be
wasted if we can spare it false efforts by recognizing those permanent
ingredients of our being indicated by the words pugnacity, greed, sex,
fear. Machiavelli was not inclined to make little of what an unhampered
ruler could do with his subjects; yet he saw in such passions as these a
fixed limit to the power of the Prince. "It makes him hated above all
things to be rapacious, and to be violator of the property and women of
his subjects, from both of which he must abstain." And if Machiavelli's
despotism meets its master in the undercurrents of human instinct,
governments of less determined stripe, whether of states or of persons,
would hardly do well to treat these ultimate data with less respect.

2. Human Nature, Folkways, and the Mores[66]

It is generally taken for granted that men inherited some guiding
instincts from their beast ancestry, and it may be true, although it has
never been proved. If there were such inheritances, they controlled and
aided the first efforts to satisfy needs. Analogy makes it easy to