r reform implies form.
It implies that we are trying to shape the world in a particular image;
to make it something that we see already in our minds. Evolution is
a metaphor from mere automatic unrolling. Progress is a metaphor from
merely walking along a road--very likely the wrong road. But reform
is a metaphor for reasonable and determined men: it means that we
see a certain thing out of shape and we mean to put it into shape.
And we know what shape.

Now here comes in the whole collapse and huge blunder of our age.
We have mixed up two different things, two opposite things.
Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to suit
the vision. Progress does mean (just now) that we are always changing
the vision. It should mean that we are slow but sure in bringing
justice and mercy among men: it does mean that we are very swift
in doubting the desirability of justice and mercy: a wild page
from any Prussian sophist makes men doubt it. Progress should mean
that we are always walking towards the New Jerusalem. It does mean
that the New Jerusalem is always walking away from us. We are not
altering the real to suit the ideal. We are altering the ideal:
it is easier.

Silly examples are always simpler; let us suppose a man wanted
a particular kind of world; say, a blue world. He would have no
cause to complain of the slightness or swiftness of his task;
he might toil for a long time at the transformation; he could
work away (in every sense) until all was blue. He could have
heroic adventures; the putting of the last touches to a blue tiger.
He could have fairy dreams; the dawn of a blue moon. But if he
worked hard, that high-minded reformer would certainly (from his own
point of view) leave the world better and bluer than he found it.
If he altered a blade of grass to his favourite colour every day,
he would get on slowly. But if he altered his favourite colour
every day, he would not get on at all. If, after reading a
fresh philosopher, he started to paint everything red or yellow,
his work would be thrown away: there would be nothing to show except
a few blue tigers walking about, specimens of his early bad manner.
This is exactly the position of the average modern thinker.
It will be said that this is avowedly a preposterous example.
But it is literally the fact of recent history. The great and grave
changes in our political civilization all belonged to the early
nineteenth cen