the two forces--both so necessary and both so dangerous--so apart
and so intense: Judaea changed in inward thought, just as Borne
changed in exterior power. Each change was continuous, gradual and
good. In early times every sort of advantage tends to become a
military advantage; such is the best way, then, to keep it alive.
But the Jewish advantage never did so; beginning in religion,
contrary to a thousand analogies, it remained religious. For that we
care for them; from that have issued endless consequences. But I
cannot deal with such matters here, nor are they to my purpose. As
respects this essay, Judaea is an example of combined variability
and legality not investing itself in warlike power, and so perishing
at last, but bequeathing nevertheless a legacy of the combination in
imperishable mental effects.

It may be objected that this principle is like saying that men walk
when they do walk, and sit when they do sit. The problem, is, why do
men progress? And the answer suggested seems to be, that they
progress when they have a certain sufficient amount of variability
in their nature. This seems to be the old style of explanation by
occult qualities. It seems like saying that opium sends men to sleep
because it has a soporific virtue, and bread feeds because it has an
alimentary quality. But the explanation is not so absurd. It says:
'The beginning of civilisation is marked by an intense legality;
that legality is the very condition of its existence, the bond which
ties it together; but that legality--that tendency to impose a
settled customary yoke upon all men and all actions if it goes on,
kills out the variability implanted by nature, and makes different
men and different ages facsimiles of other men and other ages, as we
see them so often. Progress is only possible in those happy cases
where the force of legality has gone far enough to bind the nation