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Nature’s Law in Our Progress 425other proceeds on the same plan as the variation of individuals;each develops its own character, variant principle, natural law.This variation and fundamental following of its own separatelaw is necessary to its life, but it is equally necessary to thehealthy total life of mankind. For the principle of variation doesnot prevent free interchange, does not oppose the enrichmentof all from a common stock and of the common stock by allwhich we have seen to be the ideal principle of existence; onthe contrary, without a secure variation such interchange andmutual assimilation would be out of the question. Therefore wesee that in this harmony between our unity and our diversity liesthe secret of life; Nature insists equally in all her works uponunity and upon variation. We shall find that a real spiritual andpsychological unity can allow a free diversity and dispense withall but the minimum of uniformity which is sufficient to embodythe community of nature and of essential principle. Until we canarrive at that perfection, the method of uniformity has to beapplied, but we must not over-apply it on peril of discouraginglife in the very sources of its power, richness and sane naturalself-unfolding.The quarrel between law and liberty stands on the sameground and moves to the same solution. The diversity, the variationmust be a free variation. Nature does not manufacture,does not impose a pattern or a rule from outside; she impels lifeto grow from within and to assert its own natural law and developmentmodified only by its commerce with its environment.All liberty, individual, national, religious, social, ethical, takesits ground upon this fundamental principle of our existence. Byliberty we mean the freedom to obey the law of our being, togrow to our natural self-fulfilment, to find out naturally andfreely our harmony with our environment. The dangers anddisadvantages of liberty, the disorder, strife, waste and confusionto which its wrong use leads are indeed obvious. But theyarise from the absence or defect of the sense of unity betweenindividual and individual, between community and community,which pushes them to assert themselves at the expense of eachother instead of growing by mutual help and interchange and