The reformer, as not representing the predominating ideal and so the social equilibrium, and the man who turns out to be bad by the new ideal, thus stand originally upon the same level. "Each is an instance of a variety of the original species, but the former is the successful variety"; his ideal "represents the real forces of society and can be adopted by the whole." The struggle is one of character and conduct, and results not necessarily in the extinction of life, but in the extinction of unsuitable ideals. "The distinction of the _formally_ bad from the _materially_ good rests upon the transition from the old ideal to the new, though sometimes we use those terms as describing what is only legally wrong though morally approved. A reformer, until his reform is established, is formally wrong. He can be considered materially right only prospectively;... time only can prove whether he had really forecast the movement of his society." "Sometimes a society may be so divided, as in our civil war, that neither variety is predominant. In such a case we must say, not that there was no rule of right, but that there was a different rule for each of the two halves of the nation." "There does not arise any need for the distinction of formally and materially right conduct, until the limits have been overstepped, within which it is in any age considered right for a man to act upon his own conviction. These limits are placed very differently in different ages." Does good action, then, depend on the bad man as well as on the good? "Good and evil arise together, and good is therefore always relative to evil, but we do not therefore take our morality from the bad. We cannot, in fact, know who is bad until the standard is created, but once created, we maintain it against bad men by punishment. But, on the other hand, the moral standard does depend upon the forces which, when allowed free play, are distinguished as bad.... A large part of conduct consists of precautions which it is not only legitimate but incumbent to take, but which we should dispense with under happier conditions.... And in a second way, morality depends on 'badness,' for when a habit of action which we dislike and call bad comes to be strong enough to make itself felt, we seek to satisfy its claims as reasonable. There is... no external standard by which we can settle once and for all what claims are legitimate and what are not. We derive our conception of the reasonableness of things from our experience of their vitality and effective powers. A wise man who thinks the feelings and beliefs of his neighbors ridiculous will, by persuasion or force, resist them with all his energies, but when he finds them persist in spite of all his efforts, he will recognize that there are more things in human nature than stir within the narrow limits of his own breast. If what we now call bad conduct, murder, adultery, theft, could be conceived to become