Such a statement, moreover, immensely oversimplifies. Political forms do not originate in a once for all way. The greatest change, once it is accomplished, is simply the outcome of a vast series of adaptations and responsive accommodations, each to its own particular situation. Looking back, it is possible to make out a trend of more or less steady change in a single direction. But it is, we repeat, mere mythology to attribute such unity of result as exists (which is always easy to exaggerate) to single force or principle. Political democracy has emerged as a kind of net consequence of a vast multitude of responsive adjustments to a vast number of situations, no two of which were alike, but which tended to converge to a common outcome. The democratic convergence, moreover, was not the result of distinctively political forces and agencies. Much less is democracy the product _of_ democracy, of some inherent nisus, or immanent idea. The temperate generalization to the effect that the unity of the democratic movement is found in effort to remedy evils experienced in consequence of prior political institutions realizes that it proceeded step by step, and that each step was taken without foreknowledge of any ultimate result, and, for the most part, under the immediate influence of a number of differing impulses and slogans. It is even more important to realize that the conditions out of which the efforts at remedy grew and which it made possible for them to succeed were primarily non-political in nature. For the evils were of long standing, and any account of the movement must raise two questions: Why were efforts at improvement not made earlier, and, when they were made, why did they take just the form which they did take? The answers to both questions will be found in distinctive religious, scientific and economic changes which finally took effect in the political field, being themselves primarily non-political and innocent of democratic intent. Large questions and far-ranging ideas and ideals arose during the course of the movement. But theories of the nature of the individual and his rights, of freedom and authority, progress and order, liberty and law, of the common good and a general will, of democracy itself, did not produce the movement. They reflected it in thought; after they emerged, they entered into subsequent strivings and had practical effect.