uestion whether we can
get others to agree with us is not relevant. If we were eager for
instant overthrow, it would be the most relevant of all questions. But
we are in the preliminary stage, the stage for acting on opinion. The
fact that others do not yet share our opinion, is the very reason for
our action. We can only bring them to agree with us, if it be possible
on any terms, by persistency in our principles. This persistency, in all
but either very timid or very vulgar natures, always has been and
always will be independent of external assent or co-operation. The
history of success, as we can never too often repeat to ourselves, is
the history of minorities. And what is more, it is for the most part the
history of insurrection exactly against what the worldly spirits of the
time, whenever it may have been, deemed mere trifles and accidents, with
which sensible men should on no account dream of taking the trouble to
quarrel.

'Halifax,' says Macaulay, 'was in speculation a strong republican and
did not conceal it. He often made hereditary monarchy and aristocracy
the subjects of his keen pleasantry, while he was fighting the battles
of the court and obtaining for himself step after step in the peerage.'
We are perfectly familiar with this type, both in men who have, and men
who have not, such brilliant parts as Halifax. Such men profess to
nourish high ideals of life, of character, of social institutions. Yet
they never think of these ideals, when they are deciding what is
practically attainable. One would like to ask them what purpose is
served by an ideal, if it is not to make a guide for practice and a
landmark in dealing with the real. A man's loftiest and most ideal
notions must be of a singularly ethereal and, shall we not say,
senseless kind, if he can never see how to take a single step that may
tend in the slightest degree towards making them more real. If an ideal
has no point of contact with what exists, it is probably not much more
than the vapid outcome of intellectual or spiritual self-indulgence. If
it has such a point of contact, then there is sure to be something which
a man can do towards the fulfilment of his hopes. He cannot substitute a
new national religion for the old, but he can at least do something to
prevent people from supposing that the adherents of the old are more
numerous than they really are, and something to show them that good
ideas are not all exhausted by the ancient forms. He