In ethical ideals we find the supreme example of consciously formulated ideas acting as a driving force effecting transitions from social state to social state. Such ideas are at once gadflies irritating, and beacons luring, the victims among whom they dwell. The conscious agency of such ideas should be contrasted with senseless forces, floods, barbarians, and mechanical devices. The great transitions are due to a coincidence of forces derived from both sides of the world, its physical and its spiritual natures. Mere physical nature lets loose a flood, but it requires intelligence to provide a system of irrigation.
Great ideas enter into reality with evil associates and with disgusting alliances.
But the greatness remains, nerving the race in its slow ascent. The slow issue of general ideas into practical consequences is not wholly due to inefficiency of human character. There is a problem to be solved, and its complexity is habitually ignored by impetuous seekers. An allied plea is that there is no known way of removing the evil without the introduction of worse evils of some other type. The Methodist preachers aimed at saving men's souls in the next world, but incidentally they gave a new direction to emotions energising in this world.