The progress of ideas has completely transformed religious feeling in so far as it settles the policy of one religious group in relation to another; _therefore_ the progress of ideas will never transform patriotic feeling, which settles the policy of one political group in relation to another. What, in short, does the argument of my critics amount to? This: that so slow, so stupid is the world that, though the facts may be unassailable, they will never be learned within any period that need concern us. Without in the least desiring to score off my critics, and still less to be discourteous, I sometimes wonder it has never struck them that in the eyes of the profane this attitude of theirs must appear really as a most colossal vanity. "We" who write in newspapers and reviews understand these things; "we" can be guided by reason and wisdom, but the common clay will not see these truths for "thousands of years." I talk to the converted (so I am told) when my book is read by the editors and reviewers. _They_, of course, can understand; but the notion that mere diplomats and statesmen, the men who make up Governments and nations, should ever do so is, of course, quite too preposterous. Personally, however flattering this notion might be, I have never been able to feel its soundness. I have always strongly felt the precise opposite--namely, that what is plain to me will very soon be equally plain to my neighbor. Possessing, presumably, as much vanity as most, I am, nevertheless, absolutely convinced that simple facts which stare an ordinary busy man of affairs in the face are not going to be for ever hid from the multitude. Depend upon it, if "we" can see these things, so can the mere statesmen and diplomats and those who do the work of the world. Moreover, if what "we" write in reviews and books does not touch men's reasons, does not affect their conduct, why do we write at all? We do _not_ believe it impossible to change or form men's ideas; such a plea would doom us all to silence, and would kill religious and political literature. "Public Opinion" is not external to men; it is made by men; by what they hear and read and have suggested to them by their daily tasks, and talk and contact. If it _were_ true, therefore, that the difficulties in the way of modifying political opinion were as vast as my critics would have us believe, that would not affect our conduct; the more they emphasize those difficulties, the more they emphasize the need for effort on our part.