. They died out and history did not begin till after they
were gone. The great difficulty which history records is not that of
the first step, but that of the second step. What is most evident is
not the difficulty of getting a fixed law, but getting out of a fixed
law; not of cementing (as upon a former occasion I phrased it) a cake
of custom, but of breaking the cake of custom; not of making the first
preservative habit, but of breaking through it, and reaching something
better.

This is the precise case with the whole family of arrested
civilisations. A large part, a very large part, of the world seems to
be ready to advance to something good--to have prepared all the means
to advance to something good,--and then to have stopped, and not
advanced. India, Japan, China, almost every sort of Oriental
civilisation, though differing in nearly all other things, are in this
alike. They look as if they had paused when there was no reason for
pausing--when a mere observer from without would say they were likely
not to pause.

The reason is, that only those nations can progress which preserve and
use the fundamental peculiarity which was given by nature to man's
organism as to all other organisms. By a law of which we know no
reason, but which, is among the first by which Providence guides and
governs the world, there is a tendency in descendants to be like their
progenitors, and yet a tendency also in descendants to DIFFER from
their progenitors. The work of nature in making generations is a
patchwork--part resemblance, part contrast. In certain respects each
born generation is not like the last born; and in certain other
respects it is like the last. But the peculiarity of arrested
civilisation is to kill out varieties at birth almost; that is, in
early childhood, and before they can develop. The fixed custom which
public opinion alone tolerates is imposed on all minds, whether it
suits them or not. In that case the community feel that this custom is
the only shelter from bare tyranny, and the only security for they
value. Most Oriental communities live on land which in theory is the
property of a despotic sovereign, and neither they nor their families
could have the elements of decent existence unless they held the land
upon some sort of fixed terms. Land in that state of society is (for
all but a petty skilled minority) a necessary of life, and all the
unincreasable land being occupied, a man who is turned out of his
ho