This idea of variability affects the statical conception of order with regard to habit--the moral requirement being that the fixed habits of morality should not be so fixed as to be incapable of advancement; and with regard to conscience, of which it might be said that, instead of representing the moral order, it was more occupied in changing than in maintaining it, but which in reality thus represents the moral order, to which the ideal is a changing one. Two difficulties or objections may arise with regard to this idea of a changing ideal. The progress has been represented by personifying the ideal and supposing the person to change with each new ideal. Again, "goodness consists, we saw, of a system of conduct in the individual himself or in society, and this system forms a series in time. It would seem to follow that, if goodness is always progressive, no second act would be performed under the same law, although the very idea of the law means a series of acts." But we are not to suppose that, if fifty good men in a society act rightly, fifty new ideals are established, for the ideal represents the equilibrium of the members of the society, and it depends on whether the new ideals of the fifty men represent the new equilibrium whether we shall call the persons good or bad. Again, the ideal at any moment would be in fact realized in a series, supposing the conditions did not alter meanwhile; and while the system of conduct is serial, it is realized at any one moment in the mind of the man whose sentiments correspond to its requirements.