"The very fact," he says, "that he feels a loyalty to the oppressors as well as to the oppressed means that he can never rest until the oppressors have been converted. It is not their destruction that he wants, but a change in their hearts."[124] Such an attitude is based upon a faith in the perfectibility of man and the possibility of the regeneration of society. It leads from a desire to live one's own life according to high principles to a desire to establish similar principles in human institutions. It rejects the thesis of Reinhold Niebuhr that social groups can never live according to the same moral codes as individuals, and also the belief of such groups as the Mennonites that, since the "world" is necessarily evil, the precepts of high religion apply only to those who have accepted the Christian way of life. Instead, the conviction of those who hold this ideal that it is social as well as individual in its application leads them into the pathways of social reform, and even into political action. FOOTNOTES: [123] Henry J. Cadbury, _Colonial Quaker Antecedents to British Abolition of Slavery_, An address to the Friends' Historical Society, March 1933 (London: Friends Committee on Slavery and Protection of Native Races, 1933), reprinted from _The Friends' Quarterly Examiner_, July, 1933; Jorns, 197-233. [124] Horace G. Alexander in Heard, _et al._, _The New Pacifism_, 93. Political Action and Compromise The Quakers, for instance, have been noted for their participation in all sorts of reform movements. Since every reform in one sense involves opposition to some existing institution, Clarence Case has been led to call the Quakers "non-physical resistants;"[125] but since their real objective was usually the establishment of a new institution rather than the mere destruction of an old one, they might better be called "non-violent advocates." They were willing to advocate their reforms in the public forum and the political arena. Since, as Rufus Jones has pointed out, such action might yield to the temptation to compromise with men of lesser ideals, there has always been an element in the Society of Friends which insisted that the ideal must be served in its entirety, even to the extent of giving up public office and influence rather than to compromise.[126] In Pennsylvania the Quakers withdrew from the legislature when it became necessary in the existing political situation to vote support of the French and Indian war, but they did so not because they did not believe in political action, in which up to that moment they had taken part willingly enough, but rather because under the circumstances of the moment it was impossible to realize their ideals by that means.[127] Ruth Fry, in discussing the uncompromising attitude of the Friends on the issue of slavery, has well described the process of Quaker reform: