distinctively sheep-like characteristicsm but there may be some more
basically material characteristics which it preserves. They underlay the
structure of the mutton, and they continue to underlie the structure of the
dog's flesh which supplants it. Whatever these characteristics may be, let
us call them common material characteristics, and let us say that they
belong to or compose a common material nature.

The common material nature has its own way of existing, and perhaps its own
principles of physical action. We may suppose that we know much or that we
know little about it. This one thing at least we know, that it is capable
of becoming alternatively either mutton or dog's flesh. It is not essential
to it to be mutton, or mutton it would always be; nor dog's flesh, or it
would always be dog's flesh. It is capable of becoming either, according as
it is captured by one or other system of formal organization. So the voters
who are to go to the polls are, by their common nature, Englishmen; they
are essentially neither Socialist curs nor Conservative sheep, but
intrinsically capable of becoming either, if they become captured by either
system of party organization.

According to this way of thinking, there is a certain _looseness_ about the
relation of the common material nature to the higher forms of organization
capable of capturing it. Considered in itself alone, it is perhaps to be
seen as governed by absolutely determined laws of its own. It is heavy,
then it will fall unless obstructed; it is solid, then it will resist
intrusions. But considered as material for organization by higher forms, it
is indeterminate. It acts in one sort of way under the persuasion of the
sheep-form, and in another sort of way under the persuasion of the [16]
dog-form, and we cannot tell how it will act until we know which form is
going to capture it. No amount of study bestowed on the common material
nature will enable us to judge how it will behave under the persuasion of