In case the point is not clear, an historic example may illustrate it.
The French Revolution was really an heroic and decisive thing, because
the Jacobins willed something definite and limited. They desired the
freedoms of democracy, but also all the vetoes of democracy. They wished
to have votes and _not_ to have titles. Republicanism had an ascetic
side in Franklin or Robespierre as well as an expansive side in Danton
or Wilkes. Therefore they have created something with a solid substance
and shape, the square social equality and peasant wealth of France. But
since then the revolutionary or speculative mind of Europe has been
weakened by shrinking from any proposal because of the limits of that
proposal. Liberalism has been degraded into liberality. Men have tried
to turn "revolutionise" from a transitive to an intransitive verb. The
Jacobin could tell you not only the system he would rebel against, but
(what was more important) the system he would _not_ rebel against, the
system he would trust. But the new rebel is a sceptic, and will not
entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be
really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really
gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation
implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist
doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which
he denounces it. Thus he writes one book complaining that imperial
oppression insults the purity of women, and then he writes another book
(about the sex problem) in which he insults it himself. He curses the
Sultan because Christian girls lose their virginity, and then curses
Mrs. Grundy because they keep it. As a politician, he will cry out that
war is a waste of life, and then, as a philosopher, that all life is
waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing
a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that
the peasant ought to have killed himself. A man denounces marriage as a