160 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL CHAP. 



see the working ot them, and so adapt them to the ful- 

 filment of an admitted good end as to ensure that they 

 would be preserved by future generations. This active 

 charity or philanthropy would have a most beneficial 

 effect on character, and would undoubtedly lead to more 

 good results than the mere passive bequeathing of money 

 to be employed in some fixed, but often ill-considered 

 and comparatively inefficient manner. 



It would prevent the establishment of institutions not 

 adapted to the requirements of the age, and would thus 

 abolish a great bar to mental and moral progress. For 

 the notion of " sacredness " attached to the wishes and 

 commands of the founders of religious, educational, and 

 charitable institutions has done a vast amount of evil, in 

 confusing our notions of what is right and what is useful, 

 and in keeping up the obsolete ideas and practices of a 

 bygone age, long after they have become out of harmony 

 with a more advanced state of society. 



There is no fear, as some may imagine, that under the 

 modification of the law here suggested, such institutions 

 would want stability and would be subject to constant 

 fundamental changes in accordance with the ideas of each 

 successive body of governors, for the conservative 

 tendencies of mankind in general, and especially of all 

 governing bodies, are very strong, and customs or 

 practices, even when pernicious or absurd, seldom get 

 changed till long after their hurtfulness or foolishness are 

 universally acknowledged. In proof of this we may 

 adduce the case of our own representative government, 

 which attaches no idea of sacredness to old laws, and is 

 subject to the powerful influence of public opinion ; yet 

 we do not find any dangerous instability in our legislation, 

 but rather a slow, many think far too slow, march onward 

 in a tolerably well-defined course of reform. 



The change here advocated would also be beneficial, by 

 helping to rid us of the notion that a man can infallibly 

 prescribe what is good for his successors, or that even if 

 he could, he ought to be allowed so to prescribe ; for the 

 next generation will be quite as well able to attend to its 

 own affairs as the last was, and will certainly not be 



