the point of departure for a new
step in the adjustment, and so on interminably.

It is to be noted then, although it may be a tedious truism, that the
institutions of today--the present accepted scheme of life--do not
entirely fit the situation of today. At the same time, men's present
habits of thought tend to persist indefinitely, except as circumstances
enforce a change. These institutions which have thus been handed down,
these habits of thought, points of view, mental attitudes and aptitudes,
or what not, are therefore themselves a conservative factor. This is the
factor of social inertia, psychological inertia, conservatism. Social
structure changes, develops, adapts itself to an altered situation, only
through a change in the habits of thought of the several classes of the
community, or in the last analysis, through a change in the habits of
thought of the individuals which make up the community. The evolution of
society is substantially a process of mental adaptation on the part
of individuals under the stress of circumstances which will no longer
tolerate habits of thought formed under and conforming to a different
set of circumstances in the past. For the immediate purpose it need not
be a question of serious importance whether this adaptive process is
a process of selection and survival of persistent ethnic types or a
process of individual adaptation and an inheritance of acquired traits.

Social advance, especially as seen from the point of view of economic
theory, consists in a continued progressive approach to an approximately
exact "adjustment of inner relations to outer relations", but this
adjustment is never definitively established, since the "outer
relations" are subject to constant change as a consequence of the
progressive change going on in the "inner relations." But the degree
of approximation may be greater or less, depending on the facility with
which an adjustment is made. A readjustment of men's habits of thought
to conform with the exigencies of an altered situation is in any case
made only tardily and reluctantly, and only under the coercion exercised
by a stipulation which has made the accredited views untenable.
The readjustment of institutions and habitual views to an altered
environment is made in response to pressure from without; it is of the
nature of a response to stimulus. Freedom and facility of readjustment,
that is to say capacity for growth in social structure, therefore
dep