ends in great measure on the degree of freedom with which the
situation at any given time acts on the individual members of the
community-the degree of exposure of the individual members to the
constraining forces of the environment. If any portion or class of
society is sheltered from the action of the environment in any essential
respect, that portion of the community, or that class, will adapt
its views and its scheme of life more tardily to the altered general
situation; it will in so far tend to retard the process of social
transformation. The wealthy leisure class is in such a sheltered
position with respect to the economic forces that make for change
and readjustment. And it may be said that the forces which make for
a readjustment of institutions, especially in the case of a modern
industrial community, are, in the last analysis, almost entirely of an
economic nature.

Any community may be viewed as an industrial or economic mechanism,
the structure of which is made up of what is called its economic
institutions. These institutions are habitual methods of carrying on the
life process of the community in contact with the material environment
in which it lives. When given methods of unfolding human activity in
this given environment have been elaborated in this way, the life of
the community will express itself with some facility in these habitual
directions. The community will make use of the forces of the environment
for the purposes of its life according to methods learned in the past
and embodied in these institutions. But as population increases, and as
men's knowledge and skill in directing the forces of nature widen, the
habitual methods of relation between the members of the group, and the
habitual method of carrying on the life process of the group as a
whole, no longer give the same result as before; nor are the resulting
conditions of life distributed and apportioned in the same manner or
with the same effect among the various members as before. If the scheme
according to which the life process of the group was carried on under
the earlier conditions gave approximately the highest attainable
result--under the circumstances--in the way of efficiency or facility
of the life process of the group; then the same scheme of life unaltered
will not yield the highest result attainable in this respect under the
altered conditions. Under the altered conditions of population, skill,
and knowledge, the facility of l