CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

MANKIND has ever been ready to discuss matters in the inverseratio of their importance, so that the more closely a question isfelt to touch the hearts of all of us, the more incumbent it isconsidered upon prudent people to profess that it does not exist,to frown it down, to tell it to hold its tongue, to maintain thatit has long been finally settled, so that there is now noquestion concerning it.

So far, indeed, has this been carried through all time past thatthe actions which are most important to us, such as our passagethrough the embryonic stages, the circulation of our blood, ourrespiration, etc.etc., have long been formulated beyond allpower of reopening question concerning them - the mere fact ormanner of their being done at all being ranked among the greatdiscoveries of recent ages.Yet the analogy of past settlementswould lead us to suppose that so much unanimity was not arrivedat all at once, but rather that it must have been preceded bymuch smouldering [sic] discontent, which again was followed byopen warfare; and that even after a settlement had beenostensibly arrived at, there was still much secret want ofconviction on the part of many for several generations.

There are many who see nothing in this tendency of our nature butoccasion for sarcasm; those, on the other hand, who hold that theworld is by this time old enough to be the best judge concerningthe management of its own affairs will scrutinise [sic] thismanagement with some closeness before they venture to satirise[sic] it; nor will they do so for long without findingjustification for its apparent recklessness; for we must all fearresponsibility upon matters about which we feel we know butlittle; on the other hand we must all continually act, and forthe most part promptly.We do so, therefore, with greatersecurity when we can persuade both ourselves and others that amatter is already pigeon-holed than if we feel that we must useour own judgment for the collection, interpretation, andarrangement of the papers which deal with it.Moreover, ouraction is

thus made to appear as if it received collectivesanction; and by so appearing it receives it.Almost anysettlement, again, is felt to be better than none, and the morenearly a matter comes home to everyone, the more important is itthat it should be treated as a sleeping dog, and be let to lie,for if one person begins to open his mouth, fatal developmentsmay arise in the Babel that will follow.

It is not difficult, indeed, to show that, instead of havingreason to complain of the desire for the postponement ofimportant questions, as though the world were composed mainly ofknaves or fools, such fixity as animal and vegetable formspossess is due to this very instinct.For if there had been noreluctance, if there were no friction and vis inertae tobe encountered even after atheoretical equilibrium had beenupset, weshould have had no fixed organs nor settled proclivities, but should have been daily andhourly undergoingProtean transformations,and have still been throwing outpseudopodia like the amoeba.True, we might have come to likethis fashion of living as well as our more steady-going system ifwe had taken to it many millions of ages ago when we were yetyoung; but we have contracted other habits which have become soconfirmed that we cannot break with them.We therefore now hatethat which we should perhaps have loved if we had practised [sic]it.This, however, does not affect the argument, for our concernis with our likes and dislikes, not with the manner in whichthose likes and dislikes have come about.The discovery thatorganism is capable of modification at all has occasioned so muchastonishment that it has taken the most enlightened part of theworld more than a hundred years to leave off expressing itscontempt for such a crude, shallow, and preposterous conception. Perhaps in another hundred years we shall learn to admire thegood sense, endurance, and thorough Englishness of organism inhaving been so averse to change, even more than its versatilityin having been willing to change so much.

Nevertheless, however conservative we may be, and however muchalive to the folly and wickedness of tampering with settledconvictions-no matter what they are-without sufficient cause,there is yet such a constant though gradual change in oursurroundings as necessitates corresponding modification in ourideas, desires, and

actions.We may think that we should like tofind ourselves always in the same surroundings as our ancestors,so that we might be guided at every touch and turn by theexperience of our race, and be saved from all self- communing orinterpretation of oracular responses uttered by the facts aroundus.Yet the facts will change their utterances in spite of us;and we, too, change with age and ages in spite of ourselves, soas to see the facts around us as perhaps even more changed thanthey actually are.It has been said, "Tempora mutantur nos etmutamur in illis." The passage would have been no less trueif it had stood, "Nos mutamur et tempora mutantur innobis." Whether the organism or the surroundings beganchanging first is a matter of such small moment that the two maybe left to fight it out between themselves; but, whichever viewis taken, the fact will remain that whenever the relationsbetween the organism and its surroundings have been changed, theorganism must either succeed in putting the surroundings intoharmony with itself, or itself into harmony with thesurroundings; or must be made so uncomfortable as to be unable toremember itself as subjected to any such difficulties, and there fore to die through inability to recognise [sic] its own identityfurther.

Under these circumstances, organism must act in one or other ofthese two ways: it must either change slowly and continuouslywith the surroundings, paying cash for everything, meeting thesmallest change with a corresponding modification so far as isfound convenient; or it must put off change as long as possible,and then make larger and more sweeping changes.

Both these courses are the same in principle, the differencebeing only one of scale, and the one being a miniature of theother, as a ripple is an Atlantic wave in little; both have theiradvantages and disadvantages, so that most organisms will takethe one course for one set of things and the other for another. They will deal promptly with things which they can get at easily,and which lie more upon the surface; those, however, which aremore troublesome to reach, and lie deeper, will be handled uponmore cataclysmic principles, being allowed longer periods ofrepose followed by short periods of greater activity.

Animals breathe and circulate their blood by a little action manytimes

a minute; but they feed, some of them, only two or threetimes a day, and breed for the most part not more than once ayear, their breeding season being much their busiest time.It ison the first principle that the modification of animal forms hasproceeded mainly; but it may be questioned whether what is calleda sport is not the organic expression of discontent which hasbeen long felt, but which has not been attended to, nor been metstep by step by as much small remedial modification as was foundpracticable: so that when a change does come it comes by way ofrevolution.Or, again (only that it comes to much the samething), a sport may be compared to one of those happy thoughtswhich sometimes come to us unbidden after we have been thinkingfor a long time what to do, or how to arrange our ideas, and haveyet been unable to arrive at any conclusion.

So with politics, the smaller the matter the prompter, as ageneral rule, the settlement; on the other hand, the moresweeping the change that is felt to be necessary, the longer itwill be deferred.

The advantages of dealing with the larger questions by morecataclysmic methods are obvious.For, in the first place, allcomposite things must have a system, or arrangement of parts, sothat some parts shall depend upon and be grouped round others, asin the articulation of a skeleton and the arrangement of muscles,nerves, tendons, etc., which are attached to it.To meddle withthe skeleton is like taking up the street, or the flooring ofone's house; it so upsets our arrangements that we put it offtill whatever else is found wanted, or whatever else seems likelyto be wanted for a long time hence, can be done at the same time. Another advantage is in the rest which is given to the attentionduring the long hollows, so to speak, of the waves between theperiods of resettlement.Passion and prejudice have time to calmdown, and when attention is next directed to the same question,it is a refreshed and invigorated attention-an attention,moreover, which may be given with the help of new lights derivedfrom other quarters that were not luminous when the question waslast considered.Thirdly, it is more easy and safer to make suchalterations asexperience has proved to be necessary than toforecast what is going to be wanted.Reformers are likepaymasters, of whom there

are only two bad kinds, those who paytoo soon, and those who do not pay at all.