lended
with the past through the interpenetration of individual lives of every
stage of maturity. The threads are innumerably many, and their length
is but threescore years and ten; but there is no place at which more
than a few end, so that they are woven into one continuous and seamless
fabric. It does not exceed the facts, then, to say that the life of
society is one life, which may gather headway, increase in wealth, and
profit by experience. Through this continuity society may learn, as
the individual organism does, by the method of trial and error. Costly
blunders need not be repeated, and the waste involved {144} in untried
experiments may steadily be reduced. Furthermore, the advance is by
geometrical, and not merely by arithmetical progression. Every
discovery and achievement is multiplied in fruitfulness through being
added to the capital stock and reinvested in fresh enterprises.

III

Human progress, thus determined by the movement of life towards its
more rational, that is, more provident, organization, is attended in
all its stages with a very significant difference of emphasis. I refer
to the old conflict between _conservatism_ and _radicalism_. If this
were merely a difference of temperamental bias, it would not need to
detain us. But it is really an opposition between exaggerated truths,
in which each is boldly and impressively defined.

The truth of conservatism lies, first, in its love of the existing
order. Every established form of social life has had a certain
wholeness and strength and perfection of its own. This is as true of
savagery as it is of any type of civilization. Interests are in
equilibrium, and are guaranteed security within certain limits that are
generally understood. In other words, _at least a measure of
fulfilment may be counted on_. The conservative is right in valuing
this as a prodigious achievement. He knows that disorder is ruin, not
to {145} any class, but to all; the paralysis, if not the absolute
destruction, of all fruitful activities.

And secondly, conservatism proclaims the truth that since order
conditions all activity, it is impossible to promote human welfare
except by using order. The enemy of order threatens to destroy the
instruments of power, and so to make himself weak and helpless with the
rest. The conservative understands the real delicacy of these
instruments, and the difficulty of remodelling them while still forced
to use them. Fo