The recognition of the self-protecting quality of society is something more than a point of speculative importance.  It has a direct practical influence.  For it would add to the courage and intrepidity of the men who are most attached to the reigning order of things.  If such men could only divest themselves of a futile and nervous apprehension, that things as they are have no root in their essential fitness and harmony, and that order consequently is ever hanging on a trembling and doubtful balance, they would not only gain by the self-respect which would be added to them and the rest of the community, but all discussion would become more robust and real.  If they had a larger faith in the stability for which they profess so great an anxiety, they would be more free alike in understanding and temper to deal generously, honestly, and effectively with those whom they count imprudent innovators.  There is nothing more amusing or more instructive than to turn to the debates in parliament or the press upon some innovating proposal, after an interval since the proposal was accepted by the legislature.  The flaming hopes of its friends, the wild and desperate prophecies of its antagonists, are found to be each as ill-founded as the other.  The measure which was to do such vast good according to the one, such portentous evil according to the other, has done only a part of the promised good, and has done none of the threatened evil.  The true lesson from this is one of perseverance and thoroughness for the improver, and one of faith in the self-protectiveness of a healthy society for the conservative.  The master error of the latter is to suppose that men are moved mainly by their passions rather than their interests, that all their passions are presumably selfish and destructive, and that their own interests can seldom be adequately understood by the persons most directly concerned.  How many fallacies are involved in this group of propositions, the reader may well be left to judge for himself.

We have in this chapter considered some of the limitations which are set by the conditions of society on the duty of trying to realise our principles in action.  The general conclusion is in perfect harmony with that of the previous chapters.  A principle, if it be sound, represents one of the larger expediencies.  To abandon that for the sake of some seeming expediency of the hour, is to sacrifice the greater good for the less, on no more creditable ground than that the less is nearer.  It is better to wait, and to defer the realisation of our ideas until we can realise them fully, than to defraud the future by truncating them, if truncate them we must, in order to secure a partial triumph for them in the immediate present.  It is better to bear the burden of impracticableness, than to stifle conviction and to pare away principle until it becomes more hollowness and triviality.  What is the sense, and what is the morality, of postponing the wider utility to the narrower?  Nothing is so sure to impoverish an epoch, to deprive conduct of nobleness, and character of elevation.