The most inevitable dramatic conception, then, of the nineteenth
century, is that of a perfectly naive hero upsetting religion,
law and order in all directions, and establishing in their place
the unfettered action of Humanity doing exactly what it likes,
and producing order instead of confusion thereby because it likes
to do what is necessary for the good of the race. This
conception, already incipient in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations,
was certain at last to reach some great artist, and be embodied
by him in a masterpiece. It was also certain that if that master
happened to be a German, he should take delight in describing his
hero as the Freewiller of Necessity, thereby beyond measure
exasperating Englishmen with a congenital incapacity for
metaphysics.

PANACEA QUACKERY, OTHERWISE IDEALISM

Unfortunately, human enlightenment does not progress by nicer
and nicer adjustments, but by violent corrective reactions which
invariably send us clean over our saddle and would bring us to
the ground on the other side if the next reaction did not send
us back again with equally excessive zeal. Ecclesiasticism and
Constitutionalism send us one way, Protestantism and Anarchism
the other; Order rescues us from confusion and lands us in
Tyranny; Liberty then saves the situation and is presently found
to be as great a nuisance as Despotism. A scientifically balanced
application of these forces, theoretically possible, is
practically incompatible with human passion. Besides, we have
the same weakness in morals as in medicine: we cannot be cured
of running after panaceas, or, as they are called in the sphere
of morals, ideals. One generation sets up duty, renunciation,