In the mental life of nations, all those conflicts of ideas, of parties, of principles and of systems, in which each strives to predominate over and displace others, and by natural selection of which (the death of the many less fit, the survival of the few better or more fit) the progress of recent centuries has been chiefly due; all these conflicts have been more or less blind conflicts, in which the idea of the whole nation, in relation to the end to be achieved by each of the conflicting tendencies, has generally played but a small part and a part that often has not made strongly for progress. National actions were in the main impulsive and instinctive actions, like those of young children or the higher animals. And for this reason—that nations had too little true self-knowledge, and had not developed a true and rich ideal of national life—the self-consciousness of nations was too poor in content to serve as the guide of actions making for progress. In the individual man, it is the growing richness and accuracy of self-knowledge which alone enables him to direct his actions effectively to secure his own welfare and to improve his character and powers. Just so in nations the rapid growth of their self-knowledge and the enrichment of their ideals of national life which characterise the present time must render their self-consciousness a far more efficient guide of all national deliberation and action. The self-knowledge of the individual grows chiefly, as we have seen, through intercourse with his fellows; his idea of himself develops in fulness and accuracy in the light of his knowledge of other selves, and this knowledge in turn develops in the light of his increasing knowledge of himself. Just so the self-knowledge of nations is now growing rapidly through the intercourse of each nation with others, an intercourse far freer, more multiplex, than ever before in the history of the world; a result largely of the improved means of communication which we owe to science and the spirit of inquiry. Perhaps the most striking illustration of the operation of this new factor is the rapid spread in recent years of parliamentary institutions. The parliamentary system of national organisation was worked out in these islands by long centuries of more or less blind conflict of ideas and parties and institutions; and now other nations in rapid succession have observed and admired the system and have deliberately and self-consciously adopted it; and still the process goes on, as recently in Russia.