THE SOCIAL REFORMER 27 



sudden as they seem ; the most abrupt changes have their 

 gradual causes. Their explanation lies in the wondrous 

 capacity of human character for storing up its experience. 

 For it is questionable if anything is really lost. It is 

 certain that a constant, silent, for the most part uncon- 

 scious, accumulation of inwrought tendencies takes place. 

 And, given certain personal or social temperaments and a 

 certain conjunction of circumstance, the accumulated force 

 breaks its barriers in ways that astound. The whole 

 process of social change is continuous and law-sustained ; 

 and the social earthquake comes as naturally as the falling 

 dew. 



Trust in the good that is in the world, loyalty towards 

 the society he would raise to a higher level of well-being, 

 seem to me, therefore, to be cardinal qualities of the 

 reformer's faith. His attitude towards society is never 

 negative or denunciatory. The great reformer comes to 

 fulfil, not to destroy. He is no visionary who prophesies 

 a new world, and he does not mean to overturn. What 

 most distinguishes him from the futile enthusiast is that 

 his aims are positive and concrete, and that his touch with 

 things as they are is immediate. He enters upon his task 

 seeking to remove some particular wrong which has be- 

 come intolerable, or to bring back some old and obvious 

 truth that has been forgotten ; and it is in dealing with 

 these, often enough to his own dismay, that revolution 

 comes. For the particular wrong or old error is found to 

 have other wrongs and errors clinging to it, and to be 

 really the dead husk of what once was true. It has 

 worked itself into the structure of institutions, and become 

 a part of the texture of the mind and habits of the times. 

 Hence it cannot be removed without violence, and con- 



