ities they
represent, recourse to the arbitrament of war will still be likely.

But granting that national government does not represent a final form of
political structure, and that some federal internationalism is now
practicable, is it possible to hope or to expect that by a single
stride, or by a series of rapid strides, the sovereignty of national
states will submit to so much diminution as is involved in the more
advanced scheme of international government? Most historians, statesmen,
and political philosophers will, I think, hold that so large and rapid a
process of development is impracticable, however desirable in theory it
might be. It will be necessary, they insist, to take one step at a time,
to preserve as closely as possible the principle of continuity, and not
to attempt to move further and faster than circumstances and the
necessities of the time compel.

But do circumstances and necessities always compel us to move slowly and
to take one step at a time? Though normal growth is slow and continuous,
modern science tends to lay increasing stress upon discontinuous and
sudden larger variations in the production of organic changes. Biology
distinguishes these mutations by which new species arise from the normal
process of evolution by insensible gradations. There is, as I understand
it, no real breach of continuity, no miraculous creation, but a sudden
removal from a structural position which by slow accumulation of prior
changes had become unstable, or to a new position of stability,
involving a swift readjustment of organic parts. May not similarly
important mutations occur in the evolution of political institutions,
when a similar stress of circumstances makes itself felt? Nay, we may
further ask, whether the special function of man's reasonable will is
not to bring about these changes in the direction of individual and
collective conduct. The power of making new quick and complex
adaptations to new environments is the essential economy of the human
brain. Freedom of thought and of will are continually producing new
judgements and new determinations for action which contain this quality
of sudden mutation. Quick conversions of thought and will are of the
essence of our conscious life. When they carry important consequences to
our conduct they appear to be, and in fact are, breaches of the normal
conduct of our life which proceeds by custom, repetition, and insensible
modifications.

In politics, as in