his faculties are to be made to fit into the world's affairs, and
released for effort in a way that will bring real satisfaction.
There is a negative side also. Men come to themselves by
discovering their limitations no less than by discovering their
deeper endowments and the mastery that will make them happy. It is
the discovery of what they can not do, and ought not to attempt,
that transforms reformers into statesmen; and great should be the
joy of the world over every reformer who comes to himself. The
spectacle is not rare; the method is not hidden. The practicability
of every reform is determined absolutely and always by "the
circumstances of the case," and only those who put themselves into
the midst of affairs, either by action or by observation, can known
what those circumstances are or perceive what they signify. No
statesman dreams of doing whatever he pleases; he knows that it does
not follow that because a point of morals or of policy is obvious to
him it will be obvious to the nation, or even to his own friends;
and it is the strength of a democratic polity that there are so many
minds to be consulted and brought to agreement, and that nothing can
be wisely done for which the thought, and a good deal more than the
thought, of the country, its sentiment and its purpose, have not
been prepared. Social reform is a matter of cooperation, and if it
be of a novel kind, requires an infinite deal of converting to bring
the efficient majority to believe in it and support it. Without
their agreement and support it is impossible.


V

It is this that the more imaginative and impatient reformers find out
when they come to themselves, if that calming change ever comes to them.