s
like a schoolmaster, at least in this, she gives her finest prizes to
her high and most instructed classes; Still, even in the earliest
society, nature helps those who can help themselves, and helps them
very much.

All this should have made the progress of mankind--progress at least in
this limited sense-exceedingly common; but, in fact, any progress is
extremely rare. As a rule (and as has been insisted on before) a
stationary state is by far the most frequent condition of man, as far
as history describes that condition; the progressive state is only a
rare and an occasional exception. Before history began there must have
been in the nation which writes it much progress; else there could have
been no history. It is a great advance in civilisation to be able to
describe the common facts of life, and perhaps, if we were to examine
it, we should find that it was at least an equal advance to wish to
describe them. But very few races have made this step of progress; very
few have been capable even of the meanest sort of history; and as for
writing such a history as that of Thucydides, most nations could as
soon have constructed a planet. When history begins to record, she
finds most of the races incapable of history, arrested, unprogressive,
and pretty much where they are now.

Why, then, have not the obvious and natural causes of progress (as we
should call them) produced those obvious and natural effects? Why have
the real fortunes of mankind been so different from the fortunes which
we should expect? This is the problem which in various forms I have
taken up in these papers, and this is the outline of the solution which
I have attempted to propose.

The progress of MAN requires the co--operation of MEN for its
development. That which any one man or any one family could invent for
themselves is obviously exceedingly limited. And even if this were not
true, isolated progress could never be traced. The rudest sort of
cooperative society, the lowest tribe and the feeblest government, is
so much stronger than isolated man, that isolated man (if he ever
existed in any shape which could be called man), might very easily have
ceased to exist. The first principle of the subject is that man can
only progress in 'co-operative groups;' I might say tribes and nations,
but I use the less common word because few people would at once see
that tribes and nations ARE co-operative groups, and that it is their
being so which makes th