Among Reformers 47 



pered, so far as they are affected at all, by the strut 

 ting vanity of the professional impracticables. 



It is not that these little knots of men accomplish 

 much of a positive nature that is objectionable, for 

 their direct influence is inconsiderable; but they do 

 have an undoubted indirect effect for bad, and this 

 of a double kind. They affect for evil a certain 

 number of decent men in one way and a certain num 

 ber of equally decent men in an entirely different 

 way. Some decent men, following their lead, with 

 draw themselves from the active work of life, 

 whether social, philanthropic, or political, and by the 

 amount they thus withdraw from the side of the 

 forces of good they strengthen the forces of evil, as, 

 of course, it makes no difference whether we lessen 

 the numerator or increase the denominator. Other 

 decent men are so alienated by such conduct that in 

 their turn they abandon all effort to fight for re 

 form, believing reformers to be either hypocrites or 

 fools. Both of these phenomena are perfectly fa 

 miliar to every active politician who has striven for 

 decency, and to every man who has studied history 

 in an intelligent way. Few things hurt a good cause 

 more than the excesses of its nominal friends. 



Fortunately, most extremists lack the power to 

 commit dangerous excesses. Their action is nor 

 mally as abortive as that of the queer abolitionist 

 group who, in 1864, nominated a candidate against 



