It was thus through the lengthening of his infancy that the highest of animals came to be Man,--a creature with definite social relationships and with an element of plasticity in his organization such as has come at last to make his difference from all other animals a difference in kind. Here at last there had come upon the scene a creature endowed with the capacity for progress, and a new chapter was thus opened in the history of creation. But it was not to be expected that man should all at once learn how to take advantage of this capacity. Nature, which is said to make no jumps, surely did not jump here. The whole history of civilization, indeed, is largely the history of man's awkward and stumbling efforts to avail himself of this flexibility of mental constitution with which God has endowed him. For many a weary age the progress men achieved was feeble and halting. Though it had ceased to be physically necessary for each generation to tread exactly in the steps of its predecessor, yet the circumstances of primitive society long made it very difficult for any deviation to be effected. For the tribes of primitive men were perpetually at war with each other, and their methods of tribal discipline were military methods. To allow much freedom of thought would be perilous, and the whole tribe was supposed to be responsible for the words and deeds of each of its members. The tribes most rigorous in this stern discipline were those which killed out tribes more loosely organized, and thus survived to hand down to coming generations their ideas and their methods. From this state of things an intense social conservatism was begotten,--a strong disposition on the part of society to destroy the flexible-minded individual who dares to think and behave differently from his fellows. During the past three thousand years much has been done to weaken this conservatism by putting an end to the state of things which produced it. As great and strong societies have arisen, as the sphere of warfare has diminished while the sphere of industry has enlarged, the need for absolute conformity has ceased to be felt, while the advantages of freedom and variety come to be ever more clearly apparent. At a late stage of civilization, the flexible or plastic society acquires even a military advantage over the society that is more rigid, as in the struggle between French and English civilization for primacy in the world. In our own country, the political birth of which dates from the triumph of England in that mighty struggle, the element of plasticity in man's nature is more thoroughly heeded, more fully taken account of, than in any other community known to history; and herein lies the chief potency of our promise for the future. We have come to the point where we are beginning to see that we may safely depart from unreasoning routine, and, with perfect freedom of thinking in science and in religion, with new methods of education that shall