92 HERBERT SPENCER

impersonal point of view. Let him duly realise the fact
that opinion is the agency through which character adapts
external arrangements to itself—that his opinion rightly forms
part of this agency—is a unit of forces, constituting, with
other such units, the general power which works out social
changes; and he will perceive that he may properly give
full utterance to his innermost conviction, leaving it to
produce what effect it may. It is not for nothing that he
has in him these sympathies with some principles and
repugnance to others. He with all his capacities, and aspira-
tions, and beliefs, is not an accident, but a product of his
time. He must remember that while he is a descendant of
the past, he is a parent of the future; and that his thoughts
are as children born to him, which he may not carelessly
let die. He, like every other man, may properly consider
himself as one of the myriad agencies through whom works
the Unknown Cause; and when the Unknown produces in
him a certain belief, he is thereby authorised to profess and
act out that belief" (First Principles, p. 123).ional to infer that changes like