In thus criticizing the Industrial Polity of modern times as, in the respects indicated, inferior to that of the Feudal System, the writer does not wish to be understood as affirming any more than is really said. The idea which it is desired to express is this: that the plan upon which this system was founded--the mutual interdependence of classes and their reciprocally coöperative labor--was far superior to the method of Competitive Industry now in vogue; and the true type--when rightly carried out, without the drawbacks and the evils of the Feudal System--of Social organization. That there are compensations in our modern mode, and that, on the whole, Society advances in adopting it, is true. But it will take a further step in advance when it reverts to that plan on the footing above indicated; when it adopts the _plan_ without the evils which in an ignorant and undeveloped age necessarily accompanied it. It has not been forgotten that the Church has arrayed itself, to no small extent, against the advent of new knowledge; that the State has suppressed the enlarging tendencies of individual liberty; and that both have been, in this way and in other ways, as Mr. Buckle and Professor Draper have clearly shown, clogs upon the hurrying wheels of the nations. It is precisely because they _have_ been and _are_ still so, that they served and do serve the cause of progress. It has been previously stated that new truths come from the body of advanced Thinkers, who constitute a fourth and comparatively small class in the community. The discoverer of a new truth sees the immense advantages which would accrue to Society from a knowledge of it, and is eager for its immediate promulgation and acceptance; and, if it be of a practical nature, for its incorporation into the working principles of the Social polity. This may be true. But there is another verity of equal importance, which ordinarily he does not take into consideration, namely: that the great mass of the people who form Society are not prepared for the change which he contemplates. They comprehend and act more slowly than the Thinkers. The novelty must be brought home to their understandings gradually, and assimilated. Old forms of thought, old associations, encrusted prejudices, the deep-seated opinions of years must be modified before the new will find a lodgment in their convictions.