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 would be mischievous instead of beneficial, and their results anarchic instead of stable. For a great many years we must go on passing laws for the regulation of social life, which we can quite easily perceive that the altered social life of a future age will not need, because they would be injurious to it. The zealous reformer who wishes, as we must all wish, to help the world in its wearied way to perfection must aim rather to assist the mind of people to demand greater reforms than it could as yet assimilate, than to procure the arrival of reforms for which society is not yet ripe, and must be content with the effort

To say this is not to deprecate the greatest possible energy in all endeavour that makes for progress. The doctrine, founded upon a perception of the impossibility of regenerating society except by utilising the natural and evolutionary movement of society itself, that nothing ought to be done except to wait upon this movement, betrays an evident confusion of thought, akin to the fallacy of the schoolmen, commonly called realism, partly adopted by Comte. "Society" is not in itself an entity separable from the units of society; a progress of society is only possible as the result of