Carlyle and others have urged with much reason that the mediæval workman, hemmed in as he was by mechanical and to us unreasonable restrictions, was in some respects better off than his modern successor. There was less freedom of opportunity, but also less strain, ugliness and despair; and the standards of the day were perhaps better maintained than ours are now. We need a better discipline, a more adequate organization; the competent student can hardly fail to see this; but these things do not exist ready-made, and our present task seems to be to work them out, at the expense, doubtless, of other objects toward which, in quieter times, choice might be directed. Thus it is from the interaction of personality and institutions that progress comes. The person represents more directly that human nature which it is the end of all institutions to serve, but the institution represents the net result of a development far transcending any single personal consciousness. The person will criticise, and be mostly in the wrong, but not altogether. He will attack, and mostly fail, but from many attacks change will ensue. It is also true that although institutions stand, in a general way, for the more mechanical phase of life, they yet require, within themselves, an element of personal freedom. Individuality, provided it be in harness, is the life of institutions, all vigor and adaptability depending upon it. An army is the type of a mechanical institution; and yet, even in an army, individual choice, confined of course within special channels, is vital to the machine. In the German army, according to a competent observer, there is a systematic culture of self-reliance, a “development of the individual powers by according liberty to the utmost extent possible with the maintenance of the necessary system and discipline.” “To the commandant of the company is left the entire responsibility for the instruction of his men, in what mode and at what hour he may see fit,” and “a like freedom is accorded to every officer charged with every branch whatsoever of instruction,” while “the intelligence and self-reliance of the soldier is constantly appealed to.”[139] In American armies the self-reliant spirit of the soldier and the common-sense and adaptability developed by our rough-and-ready civilization have always been of the utmost value. Nor are they unfavorable to discipline, that “true discipline of the soldiers of freedom, a discipline which must arise from individual conviction of duty and is very different from the compulsory discipline of the soldier of despotism.”[140] Thus, in the battle of Gettysburg, when Pickett’s charge broke the Federal line, and when for the moment, owing to the death of many officers, the succession of command was lost, it is said that the men without orders took up a position which enabled them to crush the invading column.