cted enterprise in dominion is to be carried into effect.

* * * * *

The case of the two formidable dynastic States whose names have been
coupled together in what has already been said is perhaps the more
immediately interesting in the present connection. As matters stand, and
in the measure in which they continue so to stand, the case of these is
in no degree equivocal. The two dynastic establishments seek dominion,
and indeed they seek nothing else, except incidentally to and in
furtherance of the main quest. As has been remarked before, it lies in
the nature of a dynastic State to seek dominion, that being the whole of
its nature in so far as it runs true to form. But a dynastic State, like
any other settled, institutionalised community of men, rests on and
draws its effectual driving force from the habit of mind of its
underlying community, the common man in the aggregate, his
preconceptions and ideals as to what things are worth while. Without a
suitable spiritual ground of this kind such a dynastic State passes out
of the category of formidable Powers and into that of precarious
despotism.

In both of the two States here in question the dynastic establishment
and its bodyguard of officials and gentlefolk may be counted on to
persevere in the faith that now animates them, until an uneasy
displacement of sentiment among the underlying populace may in time
induce them judiciously to shift their footing. Like the ruling classes
elsewhere, they are of a conservative temper and may be counted on so to
continue. They are also not greatly exposed to the discipline of
experience that makes for adaptive change in habits of life, and
therefore in the correlated habits of thought. It is always the common
man that is effectually reached by any exacting or wide-reaching change
in the conditions of life. He is relatively unsheltered from any forces
that make for adaptive change, as contrasted with the case of his
betters; and however sluggish and reluctant may be his response to such
discipline as makes for a displacement of outworn preconceptions, yet it
is always out of the mass of this common humanity that those movements
of disaffection and protest arise, which lead, on occasion, to any
material realignment of the institutional fabric or to any substantial
shift in the line of policy to be pursued under the guidance of their
betters.

The common mass of humanity, it may be said in parenthe