THE SOCIAL REFORMER 13 



science. The former gain the highest by first leap ; the 

 latter move painfully along the links of intermediate 

 causes, testing each fact as they go, as a blind man feels 

 his way with his staff. Belief in an invariable and unerr- 

 ing social order is ours only during moments of passionate 

 exaltation. And that belief is rebuked, and seems to be 

 convicted of rashness and sentimental enthusiasm, when 

 reason enters and throws its cold light on the contingencies 

 and complexities of human life the caprice of man and 

 the chance of circumstance, which make up his history. 



For is not man the most unintelligible of all beings? 

 Even as an animal he gathers into himself the complex 

 forces which have evolved him. And as to his conscious 

 life, is it not the reflex image and ideal rendering of all 

 the world he knows, and is he not therefore the resume 

 of all its problems? Above all, the moralist if he has 

 not distinguished between caprice and freedom sees in 

 the very conception of an inviolable social order a principle 

 which is fatal to the moral life, which undoubtedly does 

 demand that man shall choose his own acts and be re- 

 sponsible for his destiny. 



Now, it seems to me to be idle to deny the force of 

 these objections. Undoubtedly, the last object which man 

 will explain will be man himself, and his spirit must brood 

 long over the deeps of social life before the order of its 

 laws will emerge. Nevertheless, it does not seem to me 

 to be possible to deny the existence of these laws, or to 

 aver that all knowledge of them the tentative, proximate, 

 but growing knowledge characteristic of man entirely 

 transcends his powers. And inasmuch as it is certain that 

 men will not act with confidence amidst unknown forces, 

 and that they will not inquire with any constancy of pur- 



