st generations, it might be
said, walk in a path which they neither make, nor discover, but accept;
the main thing is that they should march. The blinkers worn by
Englishmen enable them to trot all the more steadily along the beaten
{2} road, without being disturbed by curiosity as to their destination.

But if the medicine of the constitution ought not to be made its daily
food, neither can its daily food be made its medicine. There are times
which are not ordinary, and in such times it is not enough to follow
the road. It is necessary to know where it leads, and, if it leads
nowhere, to follow another. The search for another involves
reflection, which is uncongenial to the bustling people who describe
themselves as practical, because they take things as they are and leave
them as they are. But the practical thing for a traveler who is
uncertain of his path is not to proceed with the utmost rapidity in the
wrong direction: it is to consider how to find the right one. And the
practical thing for a nation which has stumbled upon one of the
turning-points of history is not to behave as though nothing very
important were involved, as if it did not matter whether it turned to
the right or to the left, went up hill or down dale, provided that it
continued doing with a little more energy what it has done hitherto;
but to consider whether what it has done hitherto is wise, and, if it
is not wise, to alter it. When the broken ends of its industry, its
politics, its social organization, have to be pieced together after a
catastrophe, it must make a decision; for it makes a decision even if
it refuses to decide. If it is to make a decision which will wear, it
must travel beyond the philosophy momentarily in favor with the
proprietors of its newspapers. Unless it is to move with the energetic
futility of a squirrel in a revolving cage, it must have a clear
apprehension both of the {3} deficiency of what is, and of the
character of what ought to be. And to obtain this apprehension it must
appeal to some standard more stable than the momentary exigencies of
its commerce or industry or social life, and judge them by it. It
must, in short, have recourse to Principles.

Such considerations are, perhaps, not altogether irrelevant at a time
when facts have forced upon Englishmen the reconsideration of their
social institutions which no appeal to theory could induce them to
undertake. An appeal to principles is the conditio