The customary discipline, which could only be imposed on any early men by terrible sanctions, continued with those sanctions, and killed out of the whole society the propensities to variation which are the principle--of progress.
Bagehot discusses the historical constraints on societal progress due to strict disciplinary measures.
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It is natural that those who by special and admirable culture have come to look at all things upon the artistic side, should start back from these queer peculiarities.
I own that I do not entirely sympathise with the horror of these anomalies which haunts some of our best critics.
At last it strikes you that they grew up, house by house, on the devious tracks of the old green lanes; and if you follow on to the existing fields, you may often find the change half complete.
Our law very often reminds one of those outskirts of cities where you cannot for a long time tell how the streets come to wind about in so capricious and serpent-like a manner.
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