tion
to-day is to make the greatest possible progress in every direction.
Here is an anomaly, a paradox; progress made in spite of its
rejection; and, recently, a total volte-face. How shall we explain
this paradox?

In our chapter on the Principles of National Evolution,[E] we see that
the first step in progress was made through the development of
enlarging communities by means of extending boundaries and hardening
customs. We see that, on reaching this stage, the great problem was so
to break the "cake of custom" as to give liberty to individuals
whereby to secure the needful variations. We do not consider how this
was to be accomplished. We merely show that, if further progress was
to be made, it could only be through the development of the
individualistic principle to which we give the more exact name
communo-individualism. This problem as to how the "cake of custom" is
successfully broken must now engage our attention.

Mr. Bagehot contends that this process consisted, as a matter of
history, in the establishment of government by discussion. Matters of
principle came to be talked over; the desirability of this or that
measure was submitted to the people for their approval or disapproval.
This method served to stimulate definite and practical thought on a
wide scale; it substituted the thinking of the many for the thinking
of the few; it stimulated independent thinking and consequently
independent action. This is, however, but another way of saying that
it stimulated variation. A government whose action was determined
after wide discussion would be peculiarly fitted to take advantage of
all useful variations of ideas and practice. Experience shows, he
continues, that the difficulty of developing a "cake of custom" is far
more easily surmounted than that of developing government by
discussion; _i.e._, that it is far less difficult to develop
communalism than communo-individualism. The family of arrested
civilizations, of which China and India and Japan, until recent times,
are examples, were caught in the net of what had once been the source
of their progress. The tyranny of their laws and customs was such that
all individual variations were nipped in the bud. They failed to
progress because they failed to develop variations. And they failed in
this because they did not have government by discussion.

No one will dispute the importance of Mr. Bagehot's, contribution to
this subject. But it may be doubted whether