s pray.

Similarly, mankind, which sometimes surpasses even the elephant in
wisdom, has been continually torn between the idol of the Herd and the
profanity of the rebel or Rogue, and it is perhaps through the
rebel--the variation, as Darwin would call him--that man makes his
advance. The rebel is what distinguishes our States and cities from the
beehives and ant-heaps to which they are commonly compared. The progress
of ants and bees appears to have been arrested. They seem to have
developed a completely socialised polity thousands of years ago, perhaps
before man existed, and then to have stopped--stopped _dead_, as we say.
But mankind has never stopped. If a country's progress is arrested--if a
people becomes simply conservative in habits, they may die slowly, like
Egypt, or quickly, likes Sparta, but they die and disappear, unless
inspired by new life, like Japan, or by revolution, like France and
possibly Russia. For, as we are almost too frequently told, change is
the law of human life.

And may not this be just the very reason we are seeking for--the very
reason why all the world loves a rebel, at a distance? Perhaps the world
unconsciously recognises in him a symbol of change, a symbol of the law
of life. We may not like him very near us--not uncomfortably near, as we
say. For most change is uncomfortable. When I was shut up for many weeks
in a London hospital, I felt a shrinking horror of going out, as though
my skin had become too tender for this rough world. After I had been
shut up for four months in a siege, daily exposed to shells, bullets,
fever, and starvation, I felt no relief when the relief came, but rather
a dread of confronting the perils of ordinary life. So quickly does the
curse of stagnation fall upon us. And in support of stagnation are
always ranged the immense forces of Society, the prosperous, the
well-to-do, the people who are content if to-morrow is exactly like
to-day. In support of stagnation stands the power of every kind of
government--the King who sticks to his inherited importance, the Lords
who stick to their lands and titles, the experts who stick to their
theories, the officials who stick to their incomes, routine, and
leisure, the Members of Parliament who stick to their seats.

But even more powerful than all these forces in support of stagnation is
the enormous host of those whose first thought is necessarily their
daily bread--men and women who dare not risk a change for fea