ty protesting against the worst evils of the
time, and it is as true as a copy-book that zeal leads to extremes, and
one extreme to its opposite. A river flowing through a nearly level
plain turns its concavity alternately to the east and west, and we may
fairly explain each bend by the fact that the previous bend was in the
opposite direction. But that does not explain why the river flows
down-hill, nor show which direction tends downwards. We may account for
trifling oscillations, not for the main current. Nor does it seem at
first a self-evident proposition that vice, for example, necessarily
generates over-strictness. A man is not always a Pharisee because his
father has been a sinner. In fact, the people who talk so fluently about
reaction fall back whenever it suits them upon the inverse theory. If a
process happens to be continuous, the reason is as simple and
satisfactory as in the opposite case. A man is dissolute, they will tell
us, because his father was dissolute; just as they will tell us, in the
opposite case, that he was dissolute because his father was strict.
Obviously, the mere statement of a reaction is not by itself
satisfactory. We want to know why there should have been a reaction; why
the code of morals which satisfied one generation did not satisfy its
successors; why the coming man was repelled rather than attracted; what
it was that made Pope array himself in a wig instead of appreciating the
noble freedom of his predecessors; and why, again, at a given period men
became tired of the old wig business. When we have solved, or
approximated to a solution of, that problem, we shall generally find, I
suspect, that the action and reaction are generally more superficial
phenomena than we suppose, and that the great processes of evolution are
going on beneath the surface comparatively undisturbed by the changes
which first attract our notice. Every man naturally exaggerates the
share of his education due to himself. He fancies that he has made a
wonderful improvement upon his father's views, perhaps by reversing the
improvement made by the father on the grandfather's. He does not see,
what is plain enough to a more distant generation, that in reality each
generation is most closely bound to its nearest predecessors.

There is, too, a special source of ambiguity in the catchword used by
the revolutionary school. They spoke of a return to nature. What, to ask
once more a very troublesome question, is mean