t can be borne. The ages of isolation had their use, for
they trained men for ages when they were not to be isolated.

NO. II

THE USE OF CONFLICT.

'The difference between progression and stationary inaction,' says one
of our greatest living writers, 'is one of the great secrets which
science has yet to penetrate.' I am sure I do not pretend that I can
completely penetrate it; but it undoubtedly seems to me that the
problem is on the verge of solution, and that scientific successes in
kindred fields by analogy suggest some principles--which wholly remove
many of its difficulties, and indicate the sort of way in which those
which remain may hereafter be removed too.

But what is the problem? Common English, I might perhaps say common
civilised thought, ignores it. Our habitual instructors, our ordinary
conversation, our inevitable and ineradicable prejudices tend to make
us think that 'Progress' is the normal fact in human society, the fact
which we should expect to see, the fact which we should be surprised if
we did not see. But history refutes this. The ancients had no
conception of progress; they did not so much as reject the idea; they
did not even entertain the idea. Oriental nations are just the same
now. Since history began they have always been what they are. Savages,
again, do not improve; they hardly seem to have the basis on which to
build, much less the material to put up anything worth having. Only a
few nations, and those of European origin, advance; and yet these
think--seem irresistibly compelled to think--such advance to be
inevitable, natural, and eternal. Why then is this great contrast?
Before we can answer, we must investigate more accurately. No doubt
history shows that most nations are stationary now; but it affords
reason to think that all nations once advanced. Their progress was
arrested at various points; but nowhere, probably not even in the hill
tribes of India, not even in the Andaman Islanders, not even in the
savages of Terra del Fuego, do we find men who have not got some way.
They have made their little progress in a hundred different ways; they
have framed with infinite assiduity a hundred curious habits; they
have, so to say, screwed themselves into the uncomfortable corners of a
complex life, which is odd and dreary, but yet is possible. And the
corners are never the same in any two parts of the world. Our record
begins with a thousand unchanging edifices, but it shows trace