life-time of the oncoming
generation--the spiritual state of the peoples concerned in this
international quandary is not likely to undergo so radical a change as
to seriously invalidate an argument that proceeds on the present lie of
the land in this respect. Preconceptions are a work of habit impinging
on a given temperamental bent; and where, as in these premises, the
preconceptions have taken on an institutionalised form, have become
conventionalised and commonly accepted, and so have been woven into the
texture of popular common sense, they must needs be a work of protracted
and comprehensive habituation impinging on a popular temperamental bent
of so general a prevalence that it may be called congenital to the
community at large. A heritable bent pervading the group within which
inheritance runs, does not change, so long as the racial complexion of
the group remains passably intact; a conventionalised, commonly
established habit of mind will change only slowly, commonly not without
the passing of at least one generation, and only by grace of a
sufficiently searching and comprehensive discipline of experience. For
good or ill, the current situation is to be counted on not to lose
character over night or with a revolution of the seasons, so far as
concerns these spiritual factors that make or mar the fortunes of
nations.

At the same time these spiritual assets, being of the nature of habit,
are also bound to change character more or less radically, by insensible
shifting of ground, but incontinently,--provided only that the
conditions of life, and therefore the discipline of experience, undergo
any substantial change. So the immediate interest shifts to the
presumptive rate and character of those changes that are in prospect,
due to the unremitting change of circumstances under which these modern
peoples live and to the discipline of which they are unavoidably
exposed. For the present and for the immediate future the current state
of things is a sufficiently stable basis of argument; but assurance as
to the sufficiency of the premises afforded by the current state of
things thins out in proportion as the perspective of the argument runs
out into the succeeding years. The bearing of it all is two-fold, of
course. This progressive, cumulative habituation under changing
circumstances affects the case both of those democratic peoples whose
fortunes are in the hazard, and also of those dynastic States by whom
the proje