C. THE RECALCITRANCE OF HUMAN
AFFAIRS TO LAWS OF NATURE

(I) A SURVEY OF INSTANCES

(d) THE VARIABILITY OF THE RATE OF CULTURAL CHANGE

i. The Hypothesis of Invariability and the Evidence against it

IN the preceding division of this Part we have come to the conclusion
that there are laws of Nature to which human affairs are amenable;
but the same empirical survey of historical facts that has borne witness
to the currency of these laws has also informed us that they are not
inexorable.

We have found that laws of Non-Human Nature which Man cannot
abrogate or even modify can nevertheless be brought under human con-
trol in the sense that Man can elude the incidence of these laws when
their operation would have frustrated his purposes, and court it when
this will serve them. Though, for example, Man is powerless to change
either the direction or the force of the winds, he can trim his sails to
catch winds that will carry his ship towards the port for which he is
making; he can design a rig that will enable him to take advantage of
almost contrary winds by sailing in their eye; and, when he encounters
a hurricane blowing dead against him, he can reef his sails and thus
mitigate the impact of the blast. By adroitly steering the course of human
affairs amid the play of non-human forces subject to rigid and therefore
calculable and predictable laws, Man can prevent potentially adverse
laws from hindering him and can constrain potentially favourable laws
to help him in the execution of his plans; and, where the laws of Nature
with which he is confronted are laws of the Human Psyche, Man can
bring these laws, likewise, under human control in the sense that he can
diminish the discord and increase the harmony in human life by recon-
ciling personal wills that are bound to encounter one another in the life
of a creature that had to become social before it could become human,
and by bridging the gulf between each of these conscious personalities
and the Subconscious Psyche with which any personality is bound to be
mated in the life of a creature in whose soul the Spirit could never have
moved except upon the face of the waters,1 and which could never have
been made to see the light except against the foil of the darkness.2

Such evidences of Man's ability to control his own affairs either by
circumventing laws of Nature or by harnessing them raise the question
whether there may not be some circumstances in which human affairs
are not amenable to laws of Nature at all. We can explore this possibility
by following the same empirical method of inquiry that we have just
been employing in order to ascertain the extent of Nature's dominion
over Man; and we may begin by inquiring into the rate of social change.
If the tempo proves to be variable, this will be evidence, as far as it

' Gen. i. 3. - 2 Gen. i. 4.