ast four hundred years before all the
foundations of that great superstructure of doctrine and organisation
were completely laid. Again, to descend to less imposing occurrences,
the transition in the Eastern Empire from the old Roman system of
national organisation to that other system to which we give the specific
name of Byzantine,--this transition, so infinitely less important as it
was than either of the two other movements, yet occupied no less than a
couple of hundred years. The conditions of speech make it indispensable
for us to use definite and compendious names for movements that were
both tardy and complex. We are forced to name a long series of events as
if they were a single event. But we lose the reality of history, we fail
to recognise one of the most striking aspects of human affairs, and
above all we miss that most invaluable practical lesson, the lesson of
patience, unless we remember that the great changes of history took up
long periods of time which, when measured by the little life of a man,
are almost colossal, like the vast changes of geology. We know how long
it takes before a species of plant or animal disappears in face of a
better adapted species. Ideas and customs, beliefs and institutions,
have always lingered just as long in face of their successors, and the
competition is not less keen nor less prolonged, because it is for one
or other inevitably destined to be hopeless. History, like geology,
demands the use of the imagination, and in proportion as the exercise of
the historic imagination is vigorously performed in thinking of the
past, will be the breadth of our conception of the changes which the
future has in store for us, as well as of the length of time and the
magnitude of effort required for their perfect achievement[30].

This much, concerning moderation in political practice. No such
considerations present themselves in the matters which concern the
shaping of our own lives, or the publications of our social opinions. In
this region we are not imposing charges upon others, either by law or
otherwise. We therefore owe nothing to the prejudices or habits of
others. If any one sets serious value upon the point of difference
between his own ideal and that which is current, if he thinks that his
'experiment in living' has promise of real worth, and that if more
persons could be induced to imitate it, some portion of mankind would be
thus put in possession of a better kind of happiness