3 7 8 ARISTO CRA CY AND E VOL UTION 



Book iv place, yet this particular change which has refused 

 :r 4 to take place in the past is perfectly certain to take 



place in the future. 



shows us not The historical evolution of society, however, and 

 the social changes that have taken place, do indeed 



are 



the socialists convev to us a verv important moral ; but this moral 

 but \\hat solid w hich the changes convey to us is curiously different 



grounds there i i r 



are for the from that which the socialists draw from them. 



rational " They draw from them the moral that because social 

 arrangements have been greatly changed, therefore 

 they can be fundamentally changed. The true 

 moral is that, although they may be changed greatly, 

 they can never be changed fundamentally ; and from 

 this there follows another as its yet more important 

 corollary that although social arrangements can 

 never be changed fundamentally, they can, never- 

 theless, be progressively and indefinitely improved, 

 but that real reforms can be accomplished only by 

 those who abandon altogether every dream of funda- 

 mental revolution. Many reforms which socialists 

 eagerly recommend, and many wishes which socialists 

 entertain, may meet with the approval and sympathy 

 of the most determined conservatives ; but the error 

 of the socialists is sufficiently indicated by the fact, 

 already remarked upon in the course of this work, 

 that the changes which they advocate, and whose 

 advent they delight to prophesy, leave the possible 

 and approach the absolutely impossible, in precise 

 proportion as these visionaries set value upon them. 

 . Nowhere is the impossibility of such changes 

 more clearly indicated than in the phrases now most 



