ard and
stumbling efforts to avail himself of this flexibility of mental
constitution with which God has endowed him. For many a weary age
the progress men achieved was feeble and halting. Though it had
ceased to be physically necessary for each generation to tread
exactly in the steps of its predecessor, yet the circumstances of
primitive society long made it very difficult for any deviation to
be effected. For the tribes of primitive men were perpetually at
war with each other, and their methods of tribal discipline were
military methods. To allow much freedom of thought would be
perilous, and the whole tribe was supposed to be responsible for
the words and deeds of each of its members. The tribes most
rigorous in this stern discipline were those which killed out
tribes more loosely organized, and thus survived to hand down to
coming generations their ideas and their methods. From this state
of things an intense social conservatism was begotten,--a strong
disposition on the part of society to destroy the flexible-minded
individual who dares to think and behave differently from his
fellows. During the past three thousand years much has been done
to weaken this conservatism by putting an end to the state of
things which produced it. As great and strong societies have
arisen, as the sphere of warfare has diminished while the sphere of
industry has enlarged, the need for absolute conformity has ceased
to be felt, while the advantages of freedom and variety come to be
ever more clearly apparent. At a late stage of civilization, the
flexible or plastic society acquires even a military advantage over
the society that is more rigid, as in the struggle between French
and English civilization for primacy in the world. In our own
country, the political birth of which dates from the triumph of
England in that mighty struggle, the element of plasticity in man's
nature is more thoroughly heeded, more fully taken account of, than
in any other community known to history; and herein lies the chief
potency of our promise for the future. We have come to the point
where we are beginning to see that we may safely depart from
unreasoning routine, and, with perfect freedom of thinking in
science and in religion, with new methods of education that shall
train our children to think for themselves while they interrogate
Nature with a courage and an insight that shall grow ever bolder
and keener, we may ere long be able fully to ava