is evident that, while desiring our own good, we are
accomplishing our own evil; if it is only incomplete, it may
suffice for a time for our social progress, but in the long run
it will lead us into a wrong road, and will finally precipitate
us into an abyss of calamities.

Then it is that we need to exercise our highest judgments; and,
be it said to our glory, they are never found wanting: but then
also commences a furious struggle between old prejudices and new
ideas. Days of conflagration and anguish! We are told of the
time when, with the same beliefs, with the same institutions, all
the world seemed happy: why complain of these beliefs; why banish
these institutions? We are slow to admit that that happy age
served the precise purpose of developing the principle of evil
which lay dormant in society; we accuse men and gods, the powers
of earth and the forces of Nature. Instead of seeking the cause
of the evil in his mind and heart, man blames his masters, his
rivals, his neighbors, and himself; nations arm themselves, and
slay and exterminate each other, until equilibrium is restored by
the vast depopulation, and peace again arises from the ashes of
the combatants. So loath is humanity to touch the customs of its
ancestors, and to change the laws framed by the founders of
communities, and confirmed by the faithful observance of the
ages.

_Nihil motum ex antiquo probabile est_: Distrust all
innovations, wrote Titus Livius. Undoubtedly it would be better
were man not compelled to change: but what! because he is born
ignorant, because he exists only on condition of gradual self-
instruction, must he abjure the light, abdicate his reason, and