em an honest and effective
adherence.

Every discussion of the more fundamental principles of conduct must
contain, expressly or by implication, some general theory of the nature
and constitution of the social union. Let us state in a few words that
which seems to command the greatest amount both of direct and analogical
evidence in our time. It is perhaps all the more important to discuss
our subject with immediate and express reference to this theory, because
it has become in some minds a plea for a kind of philosophic
indifference towards any policy of Thorough, as well as an excuse for
systematic abstention from vigorous and downright courses of action.

A progressive society is now constantly and justly compared to a growing
organism. Its vitality in this aspect consists of a series of changes in
ideas and institutions. These changes arise spontaneously from the
operation of the whole body of social conditions, external and
internal. The understanding and the affections and desires are always
acting on the domestic, political, and economic ordering. They influence
the religious sentiment. They touch relations with societies outside. In
turn they are constantly being acted on by all these elements. In a
society progressing in a normal and uninterrupted course, this play and
interaction is the sign and essence of life. It is, as we are so often
told, a long process of new adaptations and re-adaptations; of the
modification of tradition and usage by truer ideas and improved
institutions. There may be, and there are, epochs of rest, when this
modification in its active and demonstrative shape slackens or ceases to
be visible. But even then the modifying forces are only latent. Further
progress depends on the revival of their energy, before there has been
time for the social structure to become ossified and inelastic. The
history of civilisation is the history of the displacement of old
conceptions by new ones more conformable to the facts. It is the record
of the removal of old institutions and ways of living, in favour of
others of greater convenience and ampler capacity, at once multiplying
and satisfying human requirements.

Now compromise, in view of the foregoing theory of social advance, may
be of two kinds, and of these two kinds one is legitimate and the other
not. It may stand for two distinct attitudes of mind, one of them
obstructive and the other not. It may mean the deliberate suppression or
mutilation