Excerpt from Social Elements Institutions, Character Progress The philosophical belief which runs through all the chapters is not pessimism, and it is not optimism, but rather what George Eliot called meliorism. Well did our great Lieber say: We must find our way through all these mazes. There are not a few who, seeing the perversion of principles follow the besetting fallacy of men, and seek salvation from one evil in its opposite, as if the means of escaping death by fire were freezing to death. The opposite is hardly ever the cure of an evil. A glutton would not take the right step of amendment by the resolution of starving himself to death. N 0 good is done, when the ship of state is in danger, by cut ting away the very ribs of the Ship (civil Liberty, p. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.