Page:The Idea of Progress.djvu/22 If a reactionary is any one
who will not float with the stream, and a progressive anyone who
has the flowing tide with him, we must classify the Christian
Fathers and the French Encyclopaedists as belonging to the same
type, the progressive; while the Roman Stoics under the Empire
and the Russian bureaucrats under Nicholas II will be placed
together under the opposite title, as reactionaries. Or is the
progressive not the supporter of the winning cause for the time
being, but the man who thinks, with a distinguished Head of a
College who, as I remember, affirmed his Convocation, that 'any
leap in the dark is better than standing still'; and is the
reactionary the man whose constitutional timidity would deter
him from performing this act of faith when caught by a mist on
the Matterhorn? Machiavelli recognizes fixed types of human
character, such as the cautious Fabius and the impetuous Julius
II, and observes that these qualities lead sometimes to success
and sometimes to fail