by his enemies of
what he already has, he must forever be attempting to make himself
impregnable and formidable.

But war and the struggle with nature not only put a premium on the
better organization of life; they also make it a condition of
permanence. Superior individuals survive when inferior individuals
perish in the struggle, or the superior type obtains an ascendency over
the inferior. In human warfare the defeated party is rarely if ever
utterly annihilated; it tends, however, to lose its prestige or even
its identity through being assimilated to the victorious party. In
either case that form of life which in conflict proves itself the
stronger, tends to prevail, through the exclusion of those forms which
prove themselves weaker.

An unfavorable environment has, then, operated externally to develop
coherence and unity {132} in life. But the cost has been prodigious,
and must be subtracted from the gain. For there is no virtue in
conflict save the strength of the victor. Man has made a virtue of
this necessity; but to obviate so dire a necessity becomes one of the
first tasks which civilization undertakes. The attempt to eliminate
conflict, and reduce to a minimum the sacrifice of special interests,
marks the operation of the _internal_ or _moral_ principle of progress.
During the historical period this principle assumes a constantly
greater prominence.

A society may be said to be internally progressive when it can afford
to withdraw some of its energies from the struggle for existence, and
devote them to the improvement of method and the saving of waste. Its
stability and security must be so far guaranteed as to make it safe to
undertake a reconstruction, calculated to provide more fully for its
constituent interests and develop its latent possibilities. There now
obtains, within limits that tend steadily to expand, what Bagehot calls
"government by discussion," that is, the regulation of action by the
invention, selection, and trial of the best means. This substitution
of rational procedure for custom is an irreversible and germinal
process. Let me quote Bagehot's account of it:

A government by discussion, if it can be borne, at once breaks down the
yoke of fixed custom. The {133} idea of the two is inconsistent. As
far as it goes, the mere putting up of a subject to discussion is a
clear admission that that subject is in no degree settled by
established rule, and that men are free to cho