es and envoys. After the battle of
the Sea of Japan they associated it with that kind of heroism which,
owing to our geographical position, we most admire; and drawings of the
unmistakably Asiatic features of Admiral Togo, which would have excited
genuine and apparently instinctive disgust in 1859, produced a thrill of
affection in 1906.

But at this point we approach that discussion of the objects, sensible
or imaginary, of political impulse (as distinguished from the impulses
themselves), which must be reserved for my next chapter.

CHAPTER II

POLITICAL ENTITIES

Man's impulses and thoughts and acts result from the relation between
his nature and the environment into which he is born. The last chapter
approached that relation (in so far as it affects politics) from the
side of man's nature. This chapter will approach the same relation from
the side of man's political environment.

The two lines of approach have this important difference, that the
nature with which man is born is looked on by the politician as fixed,
while the environment into which man is born is rapidly and indefinitely
changing. It is not to changes in our nature, but to changes in our
environment only--using the word to include the traditions and
expedients which we acquire after birth as well as our material
surroundings--that all our political development from the tribal
organisation of the Stone Ages to the modern nation has apparently been
due.

The biologist looks on human nature itself as changing, but to him the
period of a few thousands or tens of thousands of years which constitute
the past of politics is quite insignificant. Important changes in
biological types may perhaps have occurred in the history of the world
during comparatively short periods, but they must have resulted either
from a sudden biological 'sport' or from a process of selection fiercer
and more discriminating than we believe to have taken place in the
immediate past of our own species. The present descendants of those
races which are pictured in early Egyptian tombs show no perceptible
change in their bodily appearance, and there is no reason to believe
that the mental faculties and tendencies with which they are born have
changed to any greater degree.

The numerical proportions of different races in the world have, indeed,
altered during that period, as one race proved weaker in war or less
able to resist disease than another; and races have been mi