social 'twists'
which by common confession they initiate, is the zone of formative
processes, the dynamic belt of quivering uncertainty, the line where
past and future meet. It is the theatre of all we do not take for
granted, the stage of the living drama of life; and however narrow its
scope, it is roomy enough to lodge the whole range of human passions.
The sphere of the race's average, on the contrary, no matter how large
it may be, is a dead and stagnant thing, an achieved possession, from
which all insecurity has vanished. Like the trunk of a tree, it has
been built up by successive concretions of successive active zones.
The moving present in which we live with its problems and passions, its
individual rivalries, victories, and defeats, will soon pass over to
the majority and leave its small deposit on this static mass, to make
room for fresh actors and a newer play. {260} And though it may be
true, as Mr. Spencer predicts, that each later zone shall fatally be
narrower than its forerunners; and that when the ultimate lady-like
tea-table elysium of the Data of Ethics shall prevail, such questions
as the breaking of eggs at the large or the small end will span the
whole scope of possible human warfare,--still even in this shrunken and
enfeebled generation, _spatio aetatis defessa vetusto_, what eagerness
there will be! Battles and defeats will occur, the victors will be
glorified and the vanquished dishonored just as in the brave days of
yore, the human heart still withdrawing itself from the much it has in
safe possession, and concentrating all its passion upon those
evanescent possibilities of fact which still quiver in fate's scale.

And is not its instinct right? Do not we here grasp the
race-differences _in the making_, and catch the only glimpse it is
allotted to us to attain of the working units themselves, of whose
differentiating action the race-gaps form but the stagnant sum? What
strange inversion of scientific procedure does Mr. Allen practise when
he teaches us to neglect elements and attend only to aggregate
resultants? On the contrary, simply because the active ring, whatever
its bulk, _is elementary_, I hold that the study of its conditions (be
these never so 'proximate') is the highest of topics for the social
philosopher. If individual variations determine its ups and downs and
hair-breadth escapes and twists and turns, as Mr. Allen and Mr. Fiske
both admit, Heaven forbid us from tabooin