and some beginning of mental discipline was slowly matured.
But such a community is necessarily unwarlike, and the superstition
which protects priests from home murder will not aid them in conflict
with the foreigner. Few nations mind killing their enemies' priests,
and many priestly civilisations have perished without record before
they well began. But such a civilisation will not perish if a warrior
caste is tacked on to it and is bound to defend it. On the contrary,
such a civilisation will be singularly likely to live. The head of the
sage will help the arm of the soldier.

That a nation divided into castes must be a most difficult thing to
found is plain. Probably it could only begin in a country several times
conquered, and where the boundaries of each caste rudely coincided with
the boundaries of certain sets of victors and vanquished. But, as we
now see, when founded it is a likely nation to last. A party-coloured
community of many tribes and many usages is more likely to get on, and
help itself, than a nation of a single lineage and one monotonous rule.
I say 'at first,' because I apprehend that in this case, as in so many
others in the puzzling history of progress, the very institutions which
most aid at step number one are precisely those which most impede at
step number two. The whole of a caste nation is more various than the
whole of a non-caste nation, but each caste itself is more monotonous
than anything is, or can be, in a non-caste nation. Gradually a habit
of action and type of mind forces itself on each caste, and it is
little likely to be rid of it, for all who enter it are taught in one
way and trained to the same employment. Several non-caste nations have
still continued to progress. But all caste nations have stopped early,
though some have lasted long. Each colour in the singular composite of
these tesselated societies has an indelible and invariable shade.

Thirdly, we see why so few nations have made rapid advance, and how
many have become stationary. It is in the process of becoming a nation,
and in order to become such, that they subjected themselves to the
influence which has made them stationary. They could not become a real
nation without binding themselves by a fixed law and usage, and it is
the fixity of that law and usage which has kept them as they were ever
since. I wrote a whole essay on this before, so I need say nothing now;
and I only name it because it is one of the most impor