These institutions are habitual methods of carrying on the life process of the community in contact with the material environment in which it lives.

When given methods of unfolding human activity in this given environment have been elaborated in this way, the life of the community will express itself with some facility in these habitual directions.

The community will make use of the forces of the environment for the purposes of its life according to methods learned in the past and embodied in these institutions.

But as population increases, and as men's knowledge and skill in directing the forces of nature widen, the habitual methods of relation between the members of the group, and the habitual method of carrying on the life process of the group as a whole, no longer give the same result as before; nor are the resulting conditions of life distributed and apportioned in the same manner or with the same effect among the various members as before.

If the scheme according to which the life process of the group was carried on under the earlier conditions gave approximately the highest attainable result--under the circumstances--in the way of efficiency or facility of the life process of the group; then the same scheme of life unaltered will not yield the highest result attainable in this respect under the altered conditions.