ABSTRACT
Social status can be changed either through individual social mobility or through social reform. Through social reform the submerged group or class seizes power and raises its own status. Social mobility through the avenue of social reform may therefore be more important than the other social avenues and should perhaps attract our closer attention. Some ostensibly revolutionary movements may have reformist programs, and many reformist movements may bear revolutionary implications. The life history of Lin Kuo-ying may give us some fresh suggestion as to how the general social situation brought the young educated people into the revolutionary camp. Lin Kuo-ying expressed a feeling of dissatisfaction with his own civilization, waged a bitter struggle against the old society, and correctly characterized the sentiment of his time as an eager search for progress. If the case history of Lin Kuo-ying represents the line of the modern functional revolution, the lite history of Liu Tsung-tao symbolizes the traditional way of insurrection.
