Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/367

 ABSTRA CT AND PRA CTICAL ETHICS 3 5 3

general, but is lamentably out of touch with the particular. It is not that he has been at college too long and has thought too much. He has really left it too soon and has thought too little. A little thought, like a little knowledge, is a dangerous thing. With Hamlet the consequence is that he halts and hesitates in action, and when he does act seems to abandon himself to the impulse of the moment and to be the victim of mere caprice. And so, instead of setting anything right, he sets everything wrong.

The moral is that our duty to the world is never to set every- thing right, for things are never all wrong. If they were, it would be a hopeless task to set about improvement in any form. Mr. Punch has made us laugh at the anarchist who appeals to the British policeman when he has got himself into trouble, but the caricature contains the profounder suggestion that it is, after all, to the status quo that the revolutionist must appeal as the foundation for the state of things which he hopes to establish. It is not only that he relies on human nature as it now is itself the product of the old order as the root from which the new order is to spring, but he uses present laws and institutions, a free press and public platforms, posts and rail- ways, parliaments and policemen, as the means of propagating the knowledge of it and preparing the way for its acceptance. This criticism is not, of course, meant to justify obstruction or indifference to progress. Though all can never be wrong the existence of even one faithful soul to recognize it as wrong or to protest against it means that something, at least, is right yet there is always something wrong somewhere, which each of us probably was born to set right. But the point to notice is that it is always a very definite thing, whether a defect in our own character or a defect in our neighbor's drains. When we examine it, moreover, we shall probably find that it is not something wholly new which we are required to do, but something in the line of what has been already done, developing and extending to a new case a principle already recognized.