A strict rule is not only necessary for ruling; it is also necessary for rebelling.  This fixed and familiar ideal is necessary to any sort of revolution.  Man will sometimes act slowly upon new ideas; but he will only act swiftly upon old ideas.  If I am merely to float or fade or evolve, it may be towards something anarchic; but if I am to riot, it must be for something respectable.  This is the whole weakness of certain schools of progress and moral evolution.  They suggest that there has been a slow movement towards morality, with an imperceptible ethical change in every year or at every instant.  There is only one great disadvantage in this theory.  It talks of a slow movement towards justice; but it does not permit a swift movement.  A man is not allowed to leap up and declare a certain state of things to be intrinsically intolerable.  To make the matter clear, it is better to take a specific example.  Certain of the idealistic vegetarians, such as Mr. Salt, say that the time has now come for eating no meat; by implication they assume that at one time it was right to eat meat, and they suggest (in words that could be quoted) that some day it may be wrong to eat milk and eggs.  I do not discuss here the question of what is justice to animals.  I only say that whatever is justice ought, under given conditions, to be prompt justice.  If an animal is wronged, we ought to be able to rush to his rescue.  But how can we rush if we are, perhaps, in advance of our time?  How can we rush to catch a train which may not arrive for a few centuries?  How can I denounce a man for skinning cats, if he is only now what I may possibly become in drinking a glass of milk?  A splendid and insane Russian sect ran about taking all the cattle out of all the carts.  How can I pluck up courage to take the horse out of my hansom-cab, when I do not know whether my evolutionary watch is only a little fast or the cabman’s a little slow?  Suppose I say to a sweater, “Slavery suited one stage of evolution.”  And suppose he answers, “And sweating suits this stage of evolution.”  How can I answer if there is no eternal test?  If sweaters can be behind the current morality, why should not philanthropists be in front of it?  What on earth is the current morality, except in its literal sense—­the morality that is always running away?

Thus we may say that a permanent ideal is as necessary to the innovator as to the conservative; it is necessary whether we wish the king’s orders to be promptly executed or whether we only wish the king to be promptly executed.  The guillotine has many sins, but to do it justice there is nothing evolutionary about it.  The favourite evolutionary argument finds its best answer in the axe.  The Evolutionist says, “Where do you draw the line?” the Revolutionist answers, “I draw it here:  exactly between your head and body.”  There must at any given moment be an abstract right and wrong if any blow is to be struck; there must be something eternal if there is to be anything sudden.  Therefore for all intelligible human purposes, for altering things or for keeping things as they are, for founding a system for ever, as in China, or for altering it every month as in the early French Revolution, it is equally necessary that the vision should be a fixed vision.  This is our first requirement.