Whatever way governments began, they have been, they are, and they will be, until human nature and human needs undergo a tremendous transformation. As has been said, stable governments have been rare. Some of the forces of modern civilization may make the crystallization of society into localized governments possibly more unstable than ever. In favor of the permanence of any existing order however, there has always been one conserving factor--habit. Prof. J. M. Baldwin in his instructive work, "Mutual Development," calls authority "that most tremendous thing in our moral environment," and obedience "that most magnificent thing in our moral equipment." Psychologists also tell us that habit, one of the phenomena of consolidation, indicates downward growth. With the race, as with the individual, habit, or what Bagehot calls "the solid cake of custom," has been one of the impediments to progress. Yet, governments have progressed from generation to generation. There has always been enough of the _vis viva_ to leaven social heredity. Little by little, that part of the race, whose progress has not been arrested, has outgrown the superstition of a divinity that "doth hedge a king." More and more the functions once held by king-craft have been grasped by the people; the race steadily moving toward the ideal self-government. Every agency that made for enlightenment and uplift led to this goal. The great social heritage of the past has been the evolution of law and order. There has been through the ages a sweep of collective forces that has taught men self-control, and has constantly raised the ethical standard. A _damnosa hereditas_ of ferocity, selfishness, and brutality, has been a part of the heritage; but there has been enough of salt in the general character to rescue liberty and justice even in the most reactionary times. The Democratic Ideal is based upon the three great principles of liberty, equality of rights and opportunities, and justice. In spite of indolence, apathy, inveterate conservatism, superstition, ignorance, out of these principles has flashed the day-star which the path of civilization has followed. Liberty is no longer a vagrant. "The love of liberty is simply the instinct in man for expansion," says Matthew Arnold. That instinct is always operative. Yet liberty is not an entity; it is only a state. Unregulated, discharged from the ethical obligations which we owe to each other, liberty is lost in anarchy, which is only consummate egoism. "The most aggravated forms of tyranny and slavery arise out of the most extreme form of liberty," says Plato. "If you enthrone it (liberty) alone as means and end, it will lead society first to anarchy, afterward to the despotism which you fear," says Mazzini, one of the shining liberators of the last century. "If every man has all the liberty he wants, no man has any liberty," says Goethe.