Larger knowledge of
the world and of history would make it perfectly clear that there has
always been not only a wide latitude, but great variation, in ritual
and worship; that the political story of all the progressive nations
has been one long agitation for reforms, and that no reform can ever
be final; that reform must succeed reform until the end of
time,--reforms being in their nature neither more nor less than those
readjustments to new conditions which are involved in all social
development. A wider survey of experience would make it clear that art
has many manners, and that no manner is supreme and none final.
A long experience gives a man poise, balance, and steadiness; he has
seen many things come and go, and he is neither paralysed by
depression when society goes wrong, nor irrationally elated when it
goes right. He is perfectly aware that his party is only a means to an
end, and not a piece of indestructible and infallible machinery; that
the creed he accepts has passed through many changes of
interpretation, and will pass through more; that the social order for
which he contends, if secured, will be only another stage in the
unbroken development of the organised life of men in the world.
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