to its new conditions.  That discipline of circumstances which has already wrought out such great changes in us, must go on eventually to work out yet greater ones.  That daily curbing of the lower nature and culture of the higher, which out of cannibals and devil worshippers has evolved philanthropists, lovers of peace, and haters of superstition, cannot fail to evolve out of these, men as much superior to them as they are to their progenitors.  The causes that have produced past modifications are still in action; must continue in action as long as there exists any incongruity between man’s desires and the requirements of the social state; and must eventually make him organically fit for the social state.  As it is now needless to forbid man-eating and Fetishism, so will it ultimately become needless to forbid murder, theft, and the minor offences of our criminal code.  When human nature has grown into conformity with the moral law, there will need no judges and statute-books; when it spontaneously takes the right course in all things, as in some things it does already, prospects of future reward or punishment will not be wanted as incentives; and when fit behaviour has become instinctive, there will need no code of ceremonies to say how behaviour shall be regulated.

Thus, then, may be recognised the meaning, the naturalness, the necessity of those various eccentricities of reformers which we set out by describing.  They are not accidental; they are not mere personal caprices, as people are apt to suppose.  On the contrary, they are inevitable results of the law of relationship above illustrated.  That community of genesis, function, and decay which all forms of restraint exhibit, is simply the obverse of the fact at first pointed out, that they have in two sentiments of human nature a common preserver and a common destroyer.  Awe of power originates and cherishes them all:  love of freedom undermines and periodically weakens them all.  The one defends despotism and asserts the supremacy of laws, adheres to old creeds and supports ecclesiastical authority, pays respect to titles and conserves forms; the other, putting rectitude above legality, achieves periodical instalments of political liberty, inaugurates Protestantism and works out its consequences, ignores the senseless dictates of Fashion and emancipates men from dead customs.

To the true reformer no institution is sacred, no belief above criticism.  Everything shall conform itself to equity and reason; nothing shall be saved by its prestige.  Conceding to each man liberty to pursue his own ends and satisfy his own tastes, he demands for himself like liberty; and consents to no restrictions on this, save those which other men’s equal claims involve.  No matter whether it be an ordinance of one man, or an ordinance of all men, if it trenches on his legitimate sphere of action, he denies its validity.  The tyranny that would impose on him a particular style of dress and