understand the attitude of mind which might lead to a revolt of the weary and the heavy-laden. But the smug-faced, prosperous Conservative is unable to understand, and he will never be able to understand, why persons who are prosperous, or fairly prosperous, should interfere with social conditions, and go forth proclaiming revolutionary messages. Well, there is no rational answer to be given why prosperous folk should do so, if, by rational, we mean what all can understand. What men call Reason explains very little that is beautiful, or sublimely true. Nobody knows why a genius will almost starve himself, and submit to all manner of direful deprivation, in order that he may write his poem, or compose his music, or paint his picture, or write his philosophical treatise. Plato believed that the poet was one who had been seized by a divine madness, and perhaps this notion of Plato's is as rational as any which can be conceived of in our present state of intellectual and spiritual development. For the truth is that we do not know what makes any man a poet, a revolutionary, or a lover. The love of man for man, for his country, or for the world, is the greatest of all mysteries. People debate whether Jesus worked miracles, and fail to see that he was himself, in his towering love for mankind, a miracle of miracles.

The genuine reformer is always a lover, and a great lover is necessarily a genius. I am forced to admit, however, that there are many so-called reformers who are not to be placed in the category of lovers, or of genius. They form the class of pseudo-reformers, which caused Lowell to write: “Every reformer is at heart a blackguard," and Thoreau to say: "I love reform, but I hate reformers." It has been said of Wendell Phillips that he had a vicious streak. However true or false this statement may have been, most of us have come into contact with the pseudo-reformer who uses the cause of reform in order to exploit himself. There are, indeed, some very little folk who pose as reformers. They have the heart of a stone, and the soul of an insect. They are not big enough to dwell in love, neither are they big enough to dwell in hate; to attract attention to their own little two by four souls is the whole of their ambition. They attack the landlord, or the capitalist, for ex

ploiting the people, not because they really love the people, or really hate the people's enemies, but in order to shine in the limelight. Some live on a vegetarian diet, not because they like vegetables, or regard meat as dangerous to their health, nor even through any sympathy for the slaughtered animals, but for the simple reason that if they did not indulge in some eccentric act, nobody would pay any attention to them. They denounce the church, because it costs less to denounce it than to contribute to its support. Indeed, this type of reformer has little interest in any kind of reform if it costs him anything. He, too, like the capitalist, or the landlord, whom he belabors, is the slave of his purse. Does his brother, for whom he professes so much sympathy, starve, or walk, a homeless stranger, the city's streets? Well, this, in his opinion, is a crime of society to be railed against, but he never considers the question of his own personal duty in the matter. He loves reform; he believes in Socialism, or the Single Tax, or some other panacea for the social aches and ills to which we have fallen heir, but even an unfortunate Socialist, or Single Taxer, would fare ill if he went to him for relief. Sometimes this pseudo-reformer justifies himself on the ground-so satisfactory to his purse, and selfishness of heart-that the pain of the tortured is the seed of reform; or, it may be, he is full of Darwin and the dogma of the survival of the fittest, quite oblivious of his inconsistency. It has been said that none are so uncharitable as the Socialists. I know not whether this be true or not, but it is a common trait of all pseudo-reformers to reveal their uncharitableness, after they have thrown their small wits in the public's face, and proclaimed from the house-tops their undying devotion to mankind. They should be known for what they are, and placed in the pillory of human contempt.

The genuine reformer, however, as I have said, is always a lover. He does not lose sight of the individual in the forest of humanity. He loves the real man, and not the rhetorical image merely. He loves the individual, because he sees the potentialities that inhere in every individual. To be a true reformer, one must possess sight and insight. And the real secret of all the great reformers of the world I believe to have been their innate

perception of some genuine worth, some real value, in the individual, which was buried by the monstrosities of society that they waged war against. The apostles of Democracy have seen that society does not secure the highest good so long as some individuals are forbidden to claim possession of their own souls. The Socialist sees that the division between classes and masses keeps the multitude from a realization of the self. The Anarchist perceives that coercion is the destruction of the mind. In the large essentials, Democrats, Socialists, and Anarchists have been apostles of light, although their vision has seldom been pure, for it is not given to many to see life steadily and see it whole.

All true reform means liberation; it means a new freedom somewhere. When we shall have secured the free mind and the free body, the task of the reformer will be over. The Conservative and the Radical will then be at one. Have we any reason to believe that so happy a consummation will ever be reached? No, that is unquestionably too much to expect, for the Ideal which lures humanity ever upward and onward is not finite, but infinite. Philosophers have discussed the goal of Evolution, but there is no goal of Evolution. There is no "One far-off, divine event, to which the whole creation moves." There are goals innumerable, goal beyond goal, and there shall be from everlasting to everlasting. A reform accomplished only reveals the necessity of a new reform. The clearest-sighted of Radicals. never get to the bottom of the roots. And the Conservative is needed no less than the Radical, for he sees what the Radical often overlooks, namely, the noble things that have already been secured, and may not be discarded without peril.

I am frank to confess my radicalism. But I am a Conservative, too. And I perceive with regret that most of the radicalisms of the hour are spotted with much that is hideous and forbidding. Our Radicals, if left to themselves to work out our destinies, would prove no less dangerous to the interests of the race than the Conservatives, if left to themselves. The war for the liberation of the human mind and body needs to be waged, and waged vigorously, and I am a Radical because I believe in the absolute freedom of the human soul from coercive

restraint; but when I perceive that many of our Radicals forget to pay tribute to the value of art, of letters, of metaphysic and religion, or, at least, adequate tribute to them, it becomes evident to me that conservatism has much to say for itself. How much that is finest in human life the great Tolstoy himself would have destroyed! How barren his, and all other, asceticism is! "Who but the Poet was it," says Goethe, in Wilhelm Meister, that first formed gods for us; that exalted us to them, and brought them down to us?" But many a Radical has learned to speak disrespectfully both of the poets and the gods. Utilitarianism is placed above beauty, and wealth is exalted above the ideals of religion. Our Socialists are usually materialists, and polite Radicals are prone to a cheerless agnosticism. But radicalism when it dispenses with the ideals of religion, and eschews the spirit of the great poets and prophets of the world, will discover ultimately that it has forsaken the stars, to admire a willo'-the-wisp, wandering over treacherous bogs. Without the consolations and inspirations of religion, there can be no line of prophets, and, without prophets, there can be no enduring life. Let us banish the nightmares of religion, but let us conserve its divinest dreams. One cannot rally men forever to fight around the banner of a grievance. There is little magic in a cause that has no higher object in view than to enable persons to gratify without stint their stomach-hungers and sexual desires. Our materialist friends may think otherwise, and common weakness may seem to justify them; but there is a mystical element in man's nature which causes the masses to turn away very quickly from the philosopher who can promise them nothing but brute satisfactions. Man is not a brute, but a spirit, and Socialism, or Anarchism, or any other radicalism must acquire this truth before it can conquer the world. Many Socialists, indeed, endeavor to make of Socialism a religion, and this is well, if they do not forsake the truly inspiring dogmas that have come down from the past. They must incorporate all the vital elements of Christianity. The heart and head of humanity must be satisfied. One must feel the greatness of himself, and of his kind, before he will willingly become a martyr, and no cause has ever succeeded which did not possess a large number of followers

who were willing to be sacrificed for the higher good. Will men willingly lay down their lives in order to give all men an opportunity to appease their stomach and sexual hungers, if there be no nobler battle-cry floating in the wind? Take away the inspiration which comes from the religious sentiment, and all radicalism will be but a sowing of the wind and the reaping of the whirlwind.

There will always be need of reform; hence there will always be need of Radicals. But our reformers must learn to be true Conservatives, no less than Radicals, for all true reform will be rooted and grounded in inspirations which have whispered to us out of the past. Cortes did wisely, no doubt, when he burned his ships upon reaching the coast of Mexico, but no thinker or artist will ever consent to burn his library or art-treasures, no matter what shore of destiny he may reach. He will heed the truth which Walter Pater proclaimed, in a striking passage of Gaston de Latour, a truth too often overlooked by reformers. "It happens most naturally, of course," said Pater, in speaking of Bruno, "that those who undergo the shock of spiritual or intellectual change sometimes fail to recognize their debt to the deserted cause:-How much of the heroism, or other high quality, of their rejection has really been the product of what they reject? Bruno, the escaped monk, is still a monk; and his philosophy, impious as it might seem to some, a religion." The true reformer will rejoice with Whittier that—

All the good the past hath had

Remains to make our own time glad.

The radical reformer may say, as George Fox, speaking two hundred and fifty years ago, did: "The Bible is not the Word of God; only the Divine Spirit speaking in every man is that Word"; yet he will be glad to acknowledge, if he does not overlook the truth which the wise Conservative would instil within him, that the word of God is found in the Bible, and in every other sincere book that has come from the mind of a man. All of the radical creeds of the hour are packed with truths. The Socialists, Communists, and Anarchists are speak