THE HUMAN SCIENCES 53 



himself, and at the same time builds up its truth over 

 against himself into a rational objective system. The 

 outward element is not abolished as it becomes an inner 

 content. It becomes a life whose power of resistance and 

 reaction is ever on the increase, until in the later stages 

 nothing can withstand its alchemy. The individual is 

 armed with his world, and entrenched within an established 

 order of opinions, interests, likings and dislikings ; so that 

 ultimately nothing can enter into him except by being 

 subdued into conformity with these. His self is like a 

 consuming fire which converts all things alike into fuel 

 for its flame. 



And the practical conclusion which follows for the social 

 reformer is manifest ; it is, indeed, that to which his own 

 work amongst the social wreckage generally leads him. 

 While character is still in the making he can do well-nigh 

 everything to bring out its latent powers ; for the environ- 

 ment which is to be its content is within his reach. When 

 character has been formed he is well-nigh powerless to 

 affect it ; for the environment is not only within the indi- 

 vidual he would reform, out of his reach, but within him 

 as an active power that admits only what is kin to it and 

 gives to everything that it admits its own qualities. We 

 might even omit the qualifying phrase ' ' well-nigh," were 

 it not that we can never quite go back on the one side to 

 the bare individual in a state of mere potency, nor go 

 forward on the other side to the stage where absolute 



o 



senility has been reached, spontaneity is quite extinguished 

 and character is unalterably fixed. In the first case ' ' char- 

 acter" has not been born, in the other it is dead. 



Herein lies the reason for the distressing and socially 

 disastrous fact that schemes of reform applied to depraved 



