Yet we must not press this argument, and the state of feeling that belongs to it, further than they may be fairly made to go. The danger in most natures lies on this side, for on this side our love of ease works, and our prejudices. The writer in the passage we have just quoted is describing compromise as a natural state of things, the resultant of divergent forces. He is not professing to define its conditions or limits as a practical duty. Nor is there anything in his words, or in the doctrine of social evolution of which he is the most elaborate and systematic expounder, to favour that deliberate sacrifice of truth, either in search or in expression, against which our two previous chapters were meant to protest.[28] When Mr. Spencer talks of a new social state establishing its own ideas, of course he means, and can only mean, that men and women establish their own ideas, and to do that, it is obvious that they must at one time or another have conceived them without any special friendliness of reference to the old ideas, which they were in the fulness of time to supersede. Still less, of course, can a new social state ever establish its ideas, unless the persons who hold them confess them openly, and give to them an honest and effective adherence. Every discussion of the more fundamental principles of conduct must contain, expressly or by implication, some general theory of the nature and constitution of the social union. Let us state in a few words that which seems to command the greatest amount both of direct and analogical evidence in our time. It is perhaps all the more important to discuss our subject with immediate and express reference to this theory, because it has become in some minds a plea for a kind of philosophic indifference towards any policy of Thorough, as well as an excuse for systematic abstention from vigorous and downright courses of action.