If the orthodox to some extent satisfy certain of the necessities of the present, there are other necessities of the future which can only be satisfied by those who now pass for heretical.  The plea which we are examining, if it is good for the purpose for which it is urged, would have to be expressed in this way:—­The institution is working as perfectly as it can be made to do, or as any other in its place would be likely to do, and therefore I will do nothing by word or deed towards meddling with it.  Those who think this, and act accordingly, are the consistent conservatives of the community.  If a man takes up any position short of this, his conformity, acquiescence, and inertia at once become inconsistent and culpable.  For unless the institution or belief is entirely adequate, it must be the duty of all who have satisfied themselves that it is not so, to recognise its deficiences, and at least to call attention to them, even if they lack opportunity or capacity to suggest remedies.  Now we are dealing with persons who, from the hypothesis, do not admit that this or that factor in an existing social state secures all the advantages which might be secured if instead of that factor there were some other.  We are speaking of all the various kinds of dissidents, who think that the current theology, or an established church, or a monarchy, or an oligarchic republic, is a bad thing and a lower form, even at the moment while they attribute provisional merit to it.  They can mean nothing by classing each of these as bad things, except that they either bring with them certain serious drawbacks, or exclude certain valuable advantages.  The fact that they perform their functions well, such as they are, leaves the fundamental vice or defect of these functions just where it was.  If any one really thinks that the current theology involves depraved notions of the supreme impersonation of good, restricts and narrows the intelligence, misdirects the religious imagination, and has become powerless to guide conduct, then how does the circumstance that it happens not to be wholly and unredeemedly bad in its influence, relieve our dissident from all care or anxiety as to the points in which, as we have seen, he does count it inadequate and mischievous?  Even if he thinks it does more good than harm—­a position which must be very difficult for one who believes the common supernatural conception of it to be entirely false—­even then, how is he discharged from the duty of stigmatising the harm which he admits that it does?

Again, take the case of the English monarchy.  Grant, if you will, that this institution has a certain function, and that by the present chief magistrate this function is estimably performed.  Yet if we are of those who believe that in the stage of civilisation which England has reached in other matters, the monarchy must be either obstructive and injurious, or else merely decorative; and that a merely decorative monarchy tends in divers ways to engender habits of abasement,