ready to overthrow when destruction would reform, and alert to build up when new creations would improve. These parties have had their distinctive marks and their peculiar spheres of action; and the result of their labors, both of collision and of conjunction, has been Human Progress. They may be called extreme ultraists, extreme conservatives, and rational reformers; or, to coin names, destructives, preservatives, and constructives-terms which I employ to designate forces operating upon society rather than parties, and with no special reference to combinations of men which have been thus denominated.

The mission of the extreme ultraist has ever been to search out and magnify the evils of existing institutions and systems, and to remedy the evils by destroying the institutions and systems themselves. Thus he becomes an adept at tearing down, while he never learns the art of building up. Believing that whatever is is wrong, he loves change because change cannot make matters worse, though

it

may make them better. He has no reverence for antiquity, and more than suspects that an old thing is necessarily a bad thing, which should therefore be doomed to instant extermination. Prone to measure everything by a standard exclusively his own, and pertinacious in maintaining his peculiar opinions, he becomes the slave of a theory, in support of which he reasons well from false premises, or ill from sound premises, or what is more likely, dogmatizes and denounces without reason

ing at all. Clear-sighted in viewing a single idea, but blind to its relations to other ideas, he is generally honest and always impracticable, has a supreme contempt for that system of ethical dietetics which prefers half a loaf to no bread, and would rather see a bad system or institution die of convulsions than be cured by any other nostrum than his. Fascinated with his hobby for the time being, he rides it at the top of its speed, and never dismounts till he has run it completely into the ground. Living on the strongest mental stimulants, he abhors repose, revels in excitement, prefers an opponent to a hearer, would rather quarrel than reason, and rejoices more in a revolution than a reformation. But his "toil and trouble" are not all lost to the world. He has a great truth within him, which, though obscured by prejudice, extravagance and fanaticism, sheds valuable light upon surrounding darkness. He delves among corruptions till he has exposed them to the sun, and hunts out abuses and lays bare errors which have eluded a less persevering gaze. In denouncing these, though reckless in confounding the evils of things with the things themselves, he braves scorn, defies principalities and powers, and follows his conscience and his ism to the dungeon or the stake, leaving it for posterity, which generously draws a veil over the follies of sincere men, to remember his good deeds when the works of colder and more cautious natures are forgotten.

The extreme conservative has ever been the

exact opposite of the ultraist. He sees only the good in existing institutions and systems, and will not believe they can be improved by radical change, and looks upon innovation as only a softer name for revolution. Revering the wisdom of his ancestors, he mourns over modern degeneracy, clings to old things because they are venerable for age, the legacy of the dead, and so should be worshipped reverently and let alone. He does not adhere to abuses because they are abuses; but he denies that the alleged defects are abuses; or asserts that they are only necessary infirmities incident to all things human. He abhors excitement, is self-possessed and self-complacent, and never loses his temper or his dignity except when he hears the world has got a new idea, or society is about to take a step forward. Testing the value of everything by old precedents instead of first principles, he seems never to have reflected by what means minorities have become majorities, how society has advanced from the peat-smoke of barbarism to the sun-light of civilization, nor how he happens to live in an age of printing presses and electric telegraphs. In regard to government, law and custom, he holds that whatever is is right, or, if it be wrong, that this is the result of some attempted improvement on the work of "our wise ancestors; " and he devoutly believes, that as it was in the beginning, so it ever should have remained, world without end. But his labor is not lost to mankind. His dread of innovation neutralizes the

ultraist's love of change. As the latter declares it to be impossible to drive society forward too fast, he counter-checks him by maintaining the impossibility of carrying it forward too slow. The one would make the wheels of reformation blaze with the rapidity of movement; the other would leave them to rust in immobility. The fury of the one would soon tumble the social edifice in ruins; the placidity of the other would leave it to gradually moulder away. Loving to linger around the sunny sides of things, the extreme conservative is sagacious to discover the good there is in them, prompt to point it out, and bold in its defence, while his warnings against hasty innovation induce a careful balancing of the benefits and evils of proposed changes. His labors being for his contemporaries, his name is buried with his body; for, the institutions which his age sends down to posterity bear upon them no marks of his renovating hands.

Between these antagonist parties stands the rational reformer. In him the rashness of ultraism gives place to courage; the timidity of conservatism to caution. Admitting the existence of the evils which the one anathematizes, as well as the blessings which the other idolizes, he would extirpate the former while preserving the latter, and searches for the happy medium between the extremes of complete destruction, and unimpaired preservation. He is the true eclectic; separating the real from the false, the gold from the dross, proving all things and holding fast that which is good. Neither discarding

the old because it is the legacy of the past, nor revering it because covered with the rust of antiquity; neither repudiating the new because it lacks the imprimatur of prescription, nor welcoming it because it shows the glitter of novelty, he shrinks from looking no institution, creed, or custom in the face, and questioning its claims to homage, nor from tracing the consequences of every proposed innovation and challenging its pretensions to utility. He probes the controversy between the extreme classes to the root -for every reformer is a radical, though every radical is not a reformer-and admitting the truth of much that each proclaims, he occupies the commanding position of an umpire, and is able ultimately to win to himself the more reasonable portions of the antagonist parties, who combine with him to destroy what is evil and to conserve what is good in institutions and systems, and to make such additions as will impart to them harmony and beauty. Nor does the mission of the reformer solely consist in enlisting and marshalling the forces which are to remove, remodel, and reconstruct. He so prepares the mass of indifferent men, the mere spectators of the din and confusion incident to the work, to meet the coming change, that advancing by gradual steps, if its advent does not herald all the blessings promised by its ardent friends, it avoids most of the evils predicted by its timid foes. Yet, even he is often rash, or timeserving, and is frequently found where it is impossible to distinguish him from the violent ultraist or