eal of harm; abstract illogicalities do
matter a great deal, and do a great deal of harm. And this for a reason
that any one at all acquainted with human nature can see for himself.
All injustice begins in the mind. And anomalies accustom the mind to the
idea of unreason and untruth. Suppose I had by some prehistoric law the
power of forcing every man in Battersea to nod his head three times
before he got out of bed. The practical politicians might say that this
power was a harmless anomaly; that it was not a grievance. It could do
my subjects no harm; it could do me no good. The people of Battersea,
they would say, might safely submit to it. But the people of Battersea
could not safely submit to it, for all that. If I had nodded their heads
for them for fifty years I could cut off their heads for them at the end
of it with immeasurably greater ease. For there would have permanently
sunk into every man's mind the notion that it was a natural thing for me
to have a fantastic and irrational power. They would have grown
accustomed to insanity.

For, in order that men should resist injustice, something more is
necessary than that they should think injustice unpleasant. They must
think injustice _absurd_; above all, they must think it startling. They
must retain the violence of a virgin astonishment. That is the
explanation of the singular fact which must have struck many people in
the relations of philosophy and reform. It is the fact (I mean) that
optimists are more practical reformers than pessimists. Superficially,
one would imagine that the railer would be the reformer; that the man
who thought that everything was wrong would be the man to put everything
right. In historical practice the thing is quite the other way;
curiously enough, it is the man who likes things as they are who really
makes them better. The optimist Dickens has achieved more reforms than
the pessimist Gissing. A man like Rousseau has far too rosy a theory of
human nature; but he produces a revolution. A man like David Hume thinks
that almost all things are depressing; but he is a Conservative, and
wishes to keep them as they are. A man like Godwin believes existence to
be kindly; but he is a rebel. A man like Carlyle believes existence to
be cruel; but he is a Tory. Everywhere the man who alters things begins
by liking things. And the real explanation of this success of the
optimistic reformer, of this failure of the pessimistic reformer, is,
after a