But do circumstances and necessities always compel us to move slowly and to take one step at a time?  Though normal growth is slow and continuous, modern science tends to lay increasing stress upon discontinuous and sudden larger variations in the production of organic changes.  Biology distinguishes these mutations by which new species arise from the normal process of evolution by insensible gradations.  There is, as I understand it, no real breach of continuity, no miraculous creation, but a sudden removal from a structural position which by slow accumulation of prior changes had become unstable, or to a new position of stability, involving a swift readjustment of organic parts.  May not similarly important mutations occur in the evolution of political institutions, when a similar stress of circumstances makes itself felt?  Nay, we may further ask, whether the special function of man’s reasonable will is not to bring about these changes in the direction of individual and collective conduct.  The power of making new quick and complex adaptations to new environments is the essential economy of the human brain.  Freedom of thought and of will are continually producing new judgements and new determinations for action which contain this quality of sudden mutation.  Quick conversions of thought and will are of the essence of our conscious life.  When they carry important consequences to our conduct they appear to be, and in fact are, breaches of the normal conduct of our life which proceeds by custom, repetition, and insensible modifications.

In politics, as in religion, sudden conversions under the stress of circumstances are not unknown, and they may be genuine and lasting.  And what holds of individual wills and judgements holds also of the collective mind.  That human nature in its fundaments of thought and feeling, its primary needs, desires and emotions, will not be appreciably changed even by this shattering experience of war must be conceded.  But what we may call the general state of mind, or the moral and intellectual atmosphere, will be profoundly affected.  This will be in part the result of the great economic and political disturbances which are occurring, and which will have undermined and loosened the old ideas and valuations in relation to such important institutions as property, the control of industry, the activities of woman, the party system, the State itself.  But more profound still will be the direct reaction of sorrow and suffering of war, the revelation of the power of the organized destructiveness and cruelty, and of the inadequacy of reason, justice, and goodwill as defences of civilization.  The very foundations of organized religion in the hearts of men will be shaken.  The patent failure of the State to perform its primary function of safeguarding life and property is likely to feed currents of revolutionism in every country.  The sudden changes produced in the balance of age and of sex by the destruction