But if we accept the idea that life is progress, it is easy to see that no such coincidence is to be expected. If we are moving onward and upward by the formation of higher ideals and the struggle to attain them, then our conscience will always be going out from and discrediting the actual forms of power. Whatever is will be wrong, at least to the aspiring moral sense. We have, then, between might and right, a relation like that between the mature man and the child, one strong in present force and achievement, the other in promise. Right appeals to our conscience somewhat as the child does, precisely because it is not might, but needs our championship and protection in order that it may live and grow. As time goes on it acquires might and gradually becomes established and institutional, by which time it has ceased to be right in the most vital sense, and something else has taken its place. In this way right is might in the making, while might is right in its old age. Unless we felt the established as wrong, we could not improve it. The tendency of every form of settled power—ruling classes, the creeds of the church, the formulas of the law, the dogmas of the lecture-room, business customs—is bound to be at variance with our ideal. The conflict between might and right is permanent, and is the very process by which we get on. This way of stating the case would seem to indicate that it is right that precedes and makes might, that a thing comes to power because it appeals to conscience. But it is equally true that might makes right, because ruling conditions help to form our conscience. As our moral ideals develop and we strive to carry them out, we are driven to compromise and to accept as right, principles which will work; and what will work depends in great part on the existing organization, that is, on might. If an idea proves wholly and hopelessly impracticable, it will presently cease to be looked upon as right. The belief in Christian principles of conduct as right would never have persisted if they were as impracticable as is often alleged; they are, on the contrary, widely practised in simple relations, and so appeal to most of us as pointing the way to reasonable improvement in life at large.