Revision

“ A constant concern for revision, then, would seem to be forced upon the professed rationalist, who knows how often the appeal to reason has yielded mere modifications of error, one unjustifiable credence ousting another. ”

“ Their inward, often unconscious, store of principles and thoughts, superstitions and prejudices, has to be revised because it has been revolutionized. Sometimes the revision is swept away by the revolution. ”

“ They are lessons in wrong methods of using intelligence and instructions as to a better course in the future. They are indications of the need of revision, development, readjustment. Ends grow, standards of judgment are improved. ”

“ These things also have served a purpose well, they have their faults, and they can be improved. Our political contrivances, just as much as our domestic and mechanical contrivances, need to undergo constant revision as knowledge and understanding grow. ”

“ And, lastly, let us provide in our constitution for its revision at stated periods. ”

“ It is not the custom to realize the positive fact, that methods and conclusions formed by one-half of the race only, must necessarily require revision as the other half of humanity rises into conscious responsibility. ”

“ The practicability of every reform is determined absolutely and always by “the circumstances of the case,” and only those who put themselves into the midst of affairs, either by action or by observation, can know what those circumstances are or perceive what they signify. ”

“ In all the changes to which you may be invited, remember that time and habit are at least as necessary to fix the true character of governments as of other human institutions; that experience is the surest standard by which to test the real tendency of the existing constitution of a country; that facility in changes, upon the credit of mere hypothesis and opinion, exposes to perpetual changes, from the endless variety of hypothesis and opinion. ”

“ We are enabled to unite into a consistent whole the various anomalies and contending principles that are found in the minds and affairs of men. From hence arises, not an excellence in simplicity, but one far superior, an excellence in composition. Where the great interests of mankind are concerned through a long succession of generations, that succession ought to be admitted into some share in the counsels which are so deeply to affect them.”
It is not possible to escape deep conviction of the wisdom of these reflections. They penetrate to the heart of all practicable methods of reform. ”

“ I propose to deal with reform in a plea of urgency, endeavouring at the same time to trace the evolution of things as they are to-day, quoting history as I go, with one aim only in view, to point a moral and adorn a tale. ”

“ However, you see my point: before you can have action to accomplish a purpose, you must have a vision of what the purpose is. The ideal precedes and accompanies the accomplishment of reform—that you understand! The world must be reformed, must be built up again rather, from its foundations. ”

“ For in the days of confusion and low tide of regression there are being established new modes of life and thought which through right adaptation will flow on into the full tide of progress. Revivals come which gather up and utilize the scattered and confused ideas of life, adapting and utilizing them by setting new standards and imparting new impulses of progress. ”

“ The search [48] for objective truth, the extension of the realm of law and regularity, the expansion and organization of the army of facts constantly marshaled and reviewed and made ready for service, the ever widening development of principles and the furthering of a deeper insight into their significance,—these are ideals for the advancement of science, far easier of expression than of execution, but the clear and accepted formulation of which itself attests a highly developed stage of accurate thought. ”

“ For this purpose I shall select a number of leading reformers whose work has been most important, and whose individual opinions are most significant, and seek some sort of an appraisal both of the comparative value of their work and of the promise of their characteristic ideas. ”

“ And by this aggregation of truths and elimination of errors, there must eventually be developed a correct and complete body of doctrine. Of the three phases through which human opinion passes—the unanimity of the ignorant, the disagreement of the inquiring, and the unanimity of the wise—it is manifest that the second is the parent of the third. They are not sequences in time only, they are sequences in causation. ”

“ Every resolution of a choice involves to some degree a reconstruction of the self, society, and the world. Every intelligent reconstruction is an experiment, guided by laws already known, to achieve mastery over concrete problems. ”

“ Reform is born of need, not pity. ”

“ But the Nemesis of all reformers is finality; and the reformers of education, like those of religion, fell into the profound, however common, error of mistaking the beginning for the end of the work of reformation. ”

“ The change wrought is a transcendence of the earlier level of experience and valuation, not a widening and clarification of vision on that level. And the standards which govern on the new level serve not so much to condemn the old as to seal its consignment to disuse and oblivion. Least of all can a judgment or appraisal of the old from the standpoint of the new be taken for a transcript of the motives which led to the transition. ”

“ Where this critical faculty exists, history is no longer a mere story-book, or biography a romance; orators and publications of the day are no longer infallible authorities; eloquent diction is no longer a substitute for matter, nor bold statements, or lively descriptions, a substitute for proof. ”

“ But is it not true that oftentimes the logic of events—the movements of history—reveal to us our fundamental principles, outline for us our policy of action, and even write out for us our program of procedure as correctly and even more irrevocably than philosophical formulation could do? ”

“ Every project of reform is, in their eyes, the result of ignorance or insanity, and the most compassionate it is who condescend to accuse you of what they call the bewilderment of your understanding. ‘They think themselves wiser than their fathers,’ says one, and with that the matter seems decided. ”

“ The Revival of Learning.—But the human mind, ever restive to discover the relation between causes and effects in the production of natural phenomena, would not permanently brook this restraint. The minds of the more energetic and independent thinkers revolted against the reign of authority, and, under the leadership of such minds, there began a reform that is known to us all under the title of the revival of learning, a reform of wide extent and of great importance to the human race. ”

“ My functions as your advocate are at an end. I speak with more than the sincerity of a mere advocate when I express the belief that the case against us has entirely broken down. The cry for reform which has been raised without, is superfluous, inasmuch as we have long been reforming from within, with all needful speed. ”

“ Each step in the Reform movement, whether theological, social, or political, is educational in its effects even beyond the circle in which the step is taken. My advice would be: Seek justice; but refuse no point which may be conceded, for each concession gives you additional means and strength to enforce your claim. ”

“ Now, the difference between these two schools of philosophy, that of Intuition, and that of Experience and Association, is not a mere matter of abstract speculation; it is full of practical consequences, and lies at the foundation of all the greatest differences of practical opinion in an age of progress. The practical reformer has continually to demand that changes be made in things which are supported by powerful and widely-spread feelings, or to question the apparent necessity and indefeasibleness of established facts ”

“ In years tyrannised over by abstract ideas, his work remained to plead for the concrete and the historical; among men devoted to the absolute in theory and the extreme in practice, it remained to justify the relative, to demand a consideration of circumstances and conditions, to teach men how large a field of reform lay within the bounds of moderation and good sense. ”

“ Of such a species of reform, there are two varieties. In one, the reform accords with the principles of the religion and merely invites people, who have departed from it, to revert to them and to follow them. ”

“ Even progress, which ought to superadd, for the most part only substitutes, one partial and incomplete truth for another; improvement consisting chiefly in this, that the new fragment of truth is more wanted, more adapted to the needs of the time, than that which it displaces. ”

“ Like all great reforms that have had their conception, their struggle for existence, and their ultimate triumph, any reform that contemplates so radical a change in the treatment of the beloved and respected dead is a work of time, and depends wholly upon an enlightened conception of the subject for its general recognition and popular development. ”

“ And it will be derived from the divisions of honour and usefulness, concerning which we will give rules when we lay down a system of deliberations. And if we compare the definition given by our adversaries with our own definition, and prove our own to be true, and honourable, and useful, and theirs to be entirely different. But we shall seek out things like them in an affair of either greater, or less, or equal importance, from which our description will be proved. ”

“ It will not be able, in the long run, to lean upon mere theories and maxims; it will be forced by the actual development to undergo changes, to reform and to remodel itself in correspondence with the great laws of historical progress. ”

“ And part of this inability arose from their curious fear of the past. Most movements of reform have looked to the past for great part of their inspiration. To reform means to shape anew, and he pointed out that every revolution involves the idea of a return. ”

“ L. You speak plausibly, I will grant; yet surely, after all, it is not unnatural that the Reformers of the sixteenth century should have fallen short of a full Reformation in matters of doctrine and discipline. Light breaks but gradually on the mind: one age begins a work, another finishes. ”

“ As to the improvements which are to be introduced into a political system, their quantity and their period must be determined by the degree of knowledge existing in any country, and the state of preparation of the public mind for the changes that are to be desired. ”

“ One must be impartially naif or impartially critical. If the latter, the reconstruction must be thorough-going or 'metaphysical,' and will probably preserve the common-sense view that ideas are forces, in some translated form. ”

“ Had we only succeeded in establishing these two vital points, we should have deemed them worth all the labour of research and composition, but we think we may refer with pride to the unvarying determination displayed through the whole work, to assert and maintain the great principles of justice and popular right. ”

“ General principles, ruling ideas, theories, paper plans, have been enunciated by the score; but, in point of fact, there is no system yet devised which appeals either to the common-sense and instincts of the masses, or which stands the criticism of experts. ”

“ So in one department of human thought—the investigation of natural processes—majestic progress has been made since the opening of the seventeenth century, with every promise of continued and startling advance. ”

“ Thus at every point we meet the evidence that the great principles, which now govern society, were elaborated step by step, proceeding in sequences, and tending invariably in the same upward direction. ”

“ Correctness in the statement of fact and fundamental unity in the synthesis of facts should be the aim of every popular work and success in realizing these two aims should be the final test of the historical value of the book. ”

“ It seems to me that most of us can look back the last four or five years and see the course that has been pursued by some in their eagerness and determination to disobey counsel. By these lessons and examples in the school of experience we ought to make ourselves acquainted with the principles of progress, and profit by them. ”