spread of kindlier feelings among individuals to mitigate the harshness of inevitable natural laws? Why bring in the ponderous machinery of legislation? Why crystallise customs into. codes, voluntary associations into definite political institutions?

I have already referred to the mischief and danger that may arise from customs which have outlived their use; but fixed customs, as Bagehot has so admirably pointed out,' are essential in keeping society together, and, as all scientific students of ethics have come to see, morality is dependent upon institutions. We may have to fight against custom to get a hearing for new ideas; but we must make use of custom to get them realised. Ideas can only be productive of their full benefit, if they are fixed in institutions. We cannot build up anything on a mere shifting basis of opinion. This principle is equally Physics and Politics, p. 25 ff.

applicable to the removal of old wrongs and to the introduction of new rights. Many kindly and enlightened persons here and there felt the evil of slavery, but their views were mere isolated private opinions till slavery was abolished by legal enactment in one country after another throughout the civilised world. Highly respectable and pious people in the last century had no objection even to the slave-trade. Now that slavery has been officially buried, it has not many friends left to shed tears over its grave. Certain eccentric individuals were disposed to favour religious toleration in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But even those who, being inclined to heresy themselves, like John Milton and John Locke, extended the bounds of liberty pretty far, had very distinct limits beyond. which they would not go. There is always the risk of an outburst of the persecuting spirit, even in communities that are not as a rule fiercely

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fanatical. Hence a great step is gained when in any country it is expressly and officially declared that distinctions of creed shall make no difference in the rights of citizens. It is often argued that the possession of the suffrage is of very infinitesimal value to the poor man and very little good to the poor woman when she gets it. What is a vote to those who are in want of bread? A vote is not merely an occasional and indirect means of exerting a small fraction of political influence, but, what is much more important, it is a stamp of full citizenship, of dignity and of responsibility. It is a distinct mark that the possessors of it can no longer be systematically ignored by governments and can no longer shirk the duty of thinking about public and common interests. The slaves of a kindly master, the subjects of a kindly tyrant or ruling caste may be very com fortable animals: but the master or tyrant may

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become unkindly or impotent, and the poor wretches who have been dependent on him suffer without being able to help themselves. It is always much easier to ignore an unuttered or feebly uttered claim than to revoke a right once granted. The same remark applies to the acquisition of representative institutions by a country or a locality: it marks a step gained which is not likely to be lost. Few persons, at least in this country, care so very much for the abstract advantage of a republic over a monarchy. A nominal republic may be less democratic than a nominal monarchy and to change a state into a republic might in some cases be grasping the shadow and letting the substance go. But a republic has at least this advantage, that it does not call the sovereign power by the name of a person or dynasty, but proclaims it before all the world "the commonwealth." "Noblesse oblige:" and a republic sets

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up a higher standard of political morality and thus deserves to be more harshly judged, if it falls short even of a monarchy and imitates in any way the follies and vices that are hardly avoidable where there is a royal court.

Another reason, why ideas should be embodied in institutions, is that institutions exert so great an influence upon human character-an influence sometimes ignored on professedly scientific grounds. Perhaps the most popularly accepted part of the evolution theory is the doctrine of heredity; but it may be questioned how far the popular view, nay even the view of many who have been trained in science, is not in reality the survival of a very ancient superstition, the belief in an inherited family destiny, a belief which was the natural product of a time when the family or tribe was the social and moral unit. Plato in the Laws (ix. 854) professes to regard robbers of temples as persons