The external environment of life embraces not only mechanical nature, but also such outlying units of life as have not yet been brought into harmonious relations. Conflict between individuals, tribes, races, or nations operates in a manner analogous to mechanical nature. It exerts a constant pressure in the direction of greater strength and efficiency. In order that man shall not be robbed by his enemies of what he already has, he must forever be attempting to make himself impregnable and formidable. But war and the struggle with nature not only put a premium on the better organization of life; they also make it a condition of permanence. Superior individuals survive when inferior individuals perish in the struggle, or the superior type obtains an ascendency over the inferior. In human warfare the defeated party is rarely if ever utterly annihilated; it tends, however, to lose its prestige or even its identity through being assimilated to the victorious party. In either case that form of life which in conflict proves itself the stronger, tends to prevail, through the exclusion of those forms which prove themselves weaker. An unfavorable environment has, then, operated externally to develop coherence and unity {132} in life. But the cost has been prodigious, and must be subtracted from the gain. For there is no virtue in conflict save the strength of the victor. Man has made a virtue of this necessity; but to obviate so dire a necessity becomes one of the first tasks which civilization undertakes. The attempt to eliminate conflict, and reduce to a minimum the sacrifice of special interests, marks the operation of the _internal_ or _moral_ principle of progress. During the historical period this principle assumes a constantly greater prominence. A society may be said to be internally progressive when it can afford to withdraw some of its energies from the struggle for existence, and devote them to the improvement of method and the saving of waste. Its stability and security must be so far guaranteed as to make it safe to undertake a reconstruction, calculated to provide more fully for its constituent interests and develop its latent possibilities. There now obtains, within limits that tend steadily to expand, what Bagehot calls "government by discussion," that is, the regulation of action by the invention, selection, and trial of the best means. This substitution of rational procedure for custom is an irreversible and germinal process. Let me quote Bagehot's account of it: