Socialism and character

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Chapter I : The Modern Adventure

I. Plan and Point of View 3

II. The Social Crusade 8

The Summons 8

The Experiment of Philanthropy 10

HI. Social Efficiency 13

M Earning Heaven " outgrown 13

The new Aim, Achievement 15

IV. Check-mate ! 16

Reform supplements Philanthropy 16

Defeat of Philanthropy and Reform 18

The Social Tragedy 21

Chapter II : Our Would-be Guides

I. Modern Social Idealists 23

II. The Indictment of Civilization 26

Points of View 27

The Revolt of the Ego 29

Schools of Pity 36

HI. Solutions 38

Moralize Civilization 38

Abandon Civilization 40

Abandon to Moralize 42

IV. An Impasse 48

Nietzsche against Tolstoy 48

Discouragement 49

Chapter Iii: A Promise Of Light

I. A New Force 51

iz

II. Socialism: an Historic Review 62

The Preparation 52

The " Communist Manifesto " 55

III. Review Continued: 1850-1900 57

IV. Socialism and the Idealists GO

Repudiation 60

Points of Contact 61

V. The Dividing Point 63

Socialist Attitude toward Property 63

Conservative Radicalism 64

The Socialist Challenge 67

VI. An Exultant Moment 67

Chapter Iv: "the Tug's To Come"

I. Hostility between Socialism and Religion . 71

New Fellowship 72

New Loneliness 72

The Paradox of Distrust 73

II. Historic Perspectives 74

Socialism and the Church 74

A Vicious Circle 77

III. Zones of Opposition to Socialism .... 81

Zone of Prejudice: Class-Interests 81

Zone of Appearances : Historic Circumstance . 83

IV. Last Zone of Opposition 85

Moral Incertitudes 86

Socialism and the Soul 88

V. Religion on Guard! 89

CHAPTER V : THE APOLOGIA OF RELIGION L On the Level : Average Ethics 93

Wanted, an Apologia 93

Spirit or Machine ? 94

Moral Assets of the Old Order 95

A Defense for Conservatism

z

II. On the Heights : Counsels of Perfection . 98

Franciscanism 99

Modern Parallels 102

The Summons of Sanctity 104

III. ANTITHESES' 104

The Freedom of Love versus Automatic Justice 105 The Stage of Eternity versus the Stage of Time 106

IV. The Waiting Choice 109

The Greek View of life 109

The Socialist View of life 110

The Christian View of Life 110

V. The Work before Us 112

CHAPTER I: ECONOMIC DETERMINISM IL A Controversy 118

Mnrrin i aud Bakunin 118

The Base of Life : Economic or Spiritual ? . . 121

Persistent Contradiction 122

IIL The Determinist Victory 126

Freedom's Last Stronghold 126

Economic Necessity 128

The Idealist Fallacy 130

The Socialist Contention 133

IV. The Rise of the Proletariat 136

The Workers : their Role 137

A Moral Opportunity 138

V. Democratic Applications 141

YL Syntheses 145

Idealism Triumphant 146

Idealism Obedient 147

xi

Chapter II : Class-consciousness

I. Conscience and the Class-Struggle . . . 149

II. Militant Necessities 153

Parallels 154

Provisional Values 155

III. Moral Advantages of the Class- Struggle 156

In Trade-Unions 157

In Socialism 159

Class-Feeling as a Liberating Power . . . .162

IV. Loyalties in Conflict 163

Under Feudalism 164

In Contemporary Life 165

The Socialist Menace 166

Adjustments 168

V. Loyalty to the Whole, the End of the

Class- War 169

VI. Beyond the Class-Struggle 173

The Sanctity of Nature .• ... 173

Place for Disinterestedness I 174

A Body Prepared for Us 178

VII. The Next Step 179

Part Iii: The Future Of Character Chapter I: " Free Because Imbound"

I. The Spirit in the Wheels 183

II. Virtues in Flux 188

Moral Shifting 190

The Modern Emphasis 191

III. Socialist Self-Disciplines 193

Lassalle's Summary of Progress 193

Future Checks on License 194

Why needed 195

How possible 197

The Authority of the Common Will .... 198 xii

IV. Some Probable Reactions 200

On the Malcontent 200

On the Genius 203

On the Average Man 204

V. Social Liberty at Last 204

CHAPTER II: THE ETHICS OF INEQUALITY

I. Comparison Incumbent 207

II. On the Level : the Ethics of Privilege . . 208

"Scientific" Charity 210

Other Pitfalls 213

IIL On the Level : the Ethics op Want . . . 216

Are the Poor Blessed ? 216

Poverty in Chains 219

IV. On the Heights: Counsels of Perfection . 221

Franciscanism Once More 221

A Story of Defeat 224

Defeat Persistent through History 227

V. Failure of Ethics under Social Inequal-

ity 231

Demonstrated practically 232

Demonstrated spiritually 233

A Dangerous Paradox 233

The Case for Self-Protection 234

Christianity versus Civilization 235

Reductio ad Absurduni 238

CHAPTER III: THE ETHICS OF EQUALITY L Holiness and Efficiency 239

Forever at Odds 239

Reconciled under Social Equality 240

II. The Socialized State 241

Services and Rewards 242

No Thought for the Morrow I 243

Normal Incentives 244

III. On the Level : the Virtues Transfigured . 246

xiii

IV. Equality op Opportunity in Ethics. . . . 261

Chivalry for All 252

Poverty for All 254

Sympathy as a Fine Art 255

V. Shadows 258

VI. On the Heights : The Counsels Again . . 262

The « Economic Base" of Sanctity 263

Love Gains the Right of Way 264

VII. The Return to Nature 266

Field-Flowers and Economics 267

Natural and Social Law 270

Economic Harmonies 272

Social Equality the One Hope for the Ideal of Jesus 272

Chapter Iv: The Choice: And After

I. A "Real Assent" to Socialism 273

II. Witnesses to Life 276

Contrary Attacks 276

Conflicting Sects 277

Opposite Interpretations 281

III. Personal Responsibility 282

Chapter V: Recoveries

I. The Value of Tradition 284

IL Socialism the Guardian of Property . . . 288

The Property-Instinct Sacred 289

The Property-Instinct Trained by Industrialism 291

The Property-Instinct Travestied 292

The Socialist Corrective 293

Group-Ownership : its Joy and Power .... 294

III. Socialism the Fulfillment of Idealism . . 298

IV. Socialism the Goal of Philanthropy and

Reform . . 302

Their Trend Toward Socialism 303

Their Training for Socialism 305

xiv

V. Socialism and Leadership 307

Leaden : Where to be Found ? 308

Among Socialists ? 309

Among Financiers ? 310

Among Social Reformers ? 311

Socialism a Conservative Force 312

CHAPTER I: SOCIALISM AND THEISM L Religion Indispensable 315

II. The Religious Situation 318

Religion in Bondage 318

Socialism to the Rescue 321

HI. Present-Day Factors ......... 323

Western Science : Social Reconstruction . . . 323

Contacts of East and West 324

The Gift of the Orient 326

IV. The Religious Future 327

Dogma versus Sentiment 328

Conformity versus Progress 329

The "Economic Base' 9 in Religion 330

The Divine Origin 331

V. Social Democracy and the Concept of

God 331

Personal or Impersonal ? 332

Ideas of Immanence 332

Ideas of Transcendence 333

VI. Social Democracy and the Concept op Immortality 337

Chapter II : Socialism And Christianity

I. Christianity : Is It Permanent ? 341

IL Christianity : Its Future Rivals 345

On Lines of Hedonism 346

On Lines of Asceticism 347

xv

III. Christianity : Its Essence 343

IV. Doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarna-

tion under Socialism 350

The " Social Thought of God " 351

Lowe the Alpha 352

The Incarnation the Sanction of Social Hope . 353 V. Doctrine of the Atonement under Socialism 356 Superficially Repugnant to Socialism .... 356

Profoundly Essential to It 357

Vicarious Atonement the Sacrament of Brotherhood 361

Social Remorse and Redemption 362

Love the Omega 364

VI. Economic Determinism and an Historic Revelation 366

VII. Church Forms of the Future 367

Chapter III : The Kingdom Of God And The Socialist State

I. The Social Purpose of Jesus 372

II. The Kingdom of God : its Nature .... 376

Personal, Ecclesiastical, Social ? 376

Present or Future ? 377

III. The Early Teachino : Evolution 380

Some Aspects of Citizenship 381

Brotherhood and Detachment : how Reconcile ? 383

The MedifBval Misunderstanding 385

Socialism and the Kingdom 386

IV. The Later Teaching : Revolution .... 386

The Change in Tone 387

Logic of the Sequence 388

Catastrophe Essential to Progress 390

Millennial Hope for Earth 391

V. Points of Contact with Socialism .... 392 VL The Fate in History of Jesus' Ideal . . . 395 Disintegration : the Church and the Parousia . 396 xvi

Past Achievement* of Christianity 398

Future Task : Recovery of the Kingdom-Idea . 399 The Philosophical Anarchist 400

CONCLUSION : "A WISE BEHAVIOR "

I. Conversation in Heaven 403

II. Old Morals, New Incentives 406

III. Organic Filaments 410

IV. Socialism and the Simple Life 416

Irrelevant Connection 417

The Rich Christian an Anomaly 418

The Rich Socialist a Possible Mistake .... 419

Incentives to Simplicity 420

Ascetic : ^Esthetic : Social.

Contemporary Incentive Social 421

Future Incentive ^Esthetic 422

Practical Considerations 424

V. The Religion of a Socialist 425

Expiation 425

Aspiration 427

VI. The Last Word : Fellowship and Hope • . 429

For permission to reprint portions of this book, thanks are due to The Hibbert Journal, The Atlantic Monthly, and The Harvard Theological Review.

Part I The Dilemma Socialism And Character

PART I. THE DILEMMA CHAPTER I

THE MODERN ADVENTURE I

What is the excuse for adding a voice to the confused chorus that accompanies the swift social changes in process everywhere? Why present another book on socialism ?

The naif apology is the truest : one writes to relieve one's mind. And probably the best chance of contributing something valuable to the eager conversation is frankly to strike the personal note. For these same changes are not merely external. In last analysis, they proceed from within : in final reaction, they transform character. The creation of old age pensions, the evaluation of English land, the capture of an American city government by socialists, are not only objective facts : they connote interesting things happening to our souls, which we may well like to confide to one another. For what happens to the individual soul is the only matter of real consequence in the world.

Many middle-aged persons to-day havepassed through 3 a succession of great and searching emotions, unrelated to what we usually consider personal affairs. Such emotions ennoble or belittle according to the welcome they receive. They are part of that larger consciousness which is sweeping the concerns of the whole race into its private orbit: the gift of democracy, quickening marvelous new instincts in the dull old world. They are sure to come faster in the quarter-century before us. Whether we will or no, a shuddering plunge into new social experiences awaits our generation. The magnitude of the changes may well daze us for a time ; quite possibly, we shall be more aware of the sweep of the planet on its way through space, than of that serene succession of sowings and reapings in the promotion of which it behooves us to bear our part. In the mere prospect of probable severance from many accustomed institutions, with their warm comforts of use and want, does not a salutary but confusing excitement already begin to stir among thoughtful people? And if so, may we not grow stronger in spirit by considering together those more intimate reactions on personality by which the whole process must be judged ?

Moral preparation for a New Order ! It might well be the watchword of the hour : it is the last thing of which one ever hears. The Socialist Party in Germany gains a million votes in five years. A great scheme suggesting state socialism is launched in England. If the movement in the United States is less concentrated than in older or more autocratic countries, socialist sentiment is perhaps still more widely diffused. " Shooting Niagara, — and After," was the title of one of Carlyle's alarmist pamphlets over half a century ago. The stream is broad, and we have not shot Niagara yet, but may not the increasing roar we hear be the sound of dangerous rapids, to which we are drawing near, even though no cataract threaten us with destruction?

It is of course still possible to stop one's ears : it is also feasible to try to work upstream, and many thinkers and some statesmen are to-day engaged in this pursuit. Meantime, everybody is talking. A great discussion is " on," which throws all other interests temporarily into the shade. While it rages, the socialist vote continues to increase, and the idea should occur to an impartial observer that the sober-minded public might well be getting ready for the possible plunge. But the militant socialists are too busy with propaganda to think about this, and the conservatives are absorbed in rebuttal.

This book proposes to discuss in some detail the probable moral and spiritual results of the social change that seems to be impending. The task is undertaken in the double hope of so clarifying the issues that some people now hesitant may be helped to decide where to take their stand, and of suggesting some points in the practical training of mind and conscience which the transformation in ethics accompanying any serious economic change should immediately demand. The point of view of the book is that of a socialist, — a class-conscious, revolutionary socialist, if you will, — to whom none the less the spiritual harvest, the fruits of character, are the only result worth noting in any economic order. To demonstrate the approach of socialism, or to discuss socialist theory on customary lines, is apart from the scope of this study. Many important matters germane to oui theme — such as the endlessly stimulating topic oJ incentive in the socialist community — will be treated only obliquely, because so much has been said about them already. No assertion will be made concerning the exact ultimate forms society will assume, noi the desirable balance of competitive and cooperative forces in the socialized commonwealth ; but it will be taken for granted that this balance is changing, and that civilization is engaged in evolution from earlier and purely individualistic forms, toward a socialized order. The word socialism, moreover, glows to the writer, not with the delicate rose-pink so pleasantly popular, but with a deep uncompromising red. Be it remembered nevertheless that the hue of blood and flame is the hue for the Feast Days of "the Lord, and Giver of Life," the Spirit of Pentecost.

Sound evolutionary thought finds retrospect its first duty. To retrospect, then, let us bend ourselves ; to the review of a personal experience — it may be yours, it happens to be mine — during the quarter-century behind us. The background must be sketched too, that private consciousness may be related to the general psychical life born of the changing order:

therefore a study will be made of those contending schools in social idealism which sought our suffrages during the nineteenth century and seek them still : this study to be based less on the impersonal speculations of economists than on the more tentative and human experience reflected in letters. Having gained power intelligently to face the past, some broad perception may emerge of relations and tendencies : issues will grow clearer ; certain possibilities will be rejected ; and in due time two main alternatives in social theory and attitude will present themselves for discussion.

When these alternatives are thoroughly understood, choice between them will be incumbent. But it must be long deferred; for first, inquiry must penetrate to fundamentals. Always keeping in mind quest for the social order most favorable to character, the basic assumptions of the opposing schools must be considered. This process will lead on, to such forecast as prescience can venture of the probable socialist reactions on morals and religion, and to comparison of the finer assets of the society familiar to us with those to be expected in the future. In the course of these comparisons, choice will define itself; at their close, a backward glance will compare the social ideals of the Founder of Christianity with the modern socialist schools. For those already inclined to accept socialist theory in the abstract, the note of preparation will have been stressed throughout the discussion : and before the book ends, a conclusion of practical applications will try plainly to define personal duty during these days of transition in which our lot is cast.

The book will fulfill its aim if it make the lines of that duty clearer, and if it also bring light here and there to an honest seeker for the type of civilization which shall best foster moral and spiritual values, as he stands between the clamorous schools of a socialism too often materialistic and a Christianity too often short-sighted.

II

What did the spirit experience, when, a quarter of a century or more ago, it first became aware that life to be found must be lost in the whole of humanity's well-being ?

Dreams first : high dreams and fair, such as young men must dream in any age if old men are to see visions. Dreams of fellowship and sacrifice, of a democracy coming to its own, of a Holy City of Brotherhood descending from the heavens. Born largely from the words of the great nineteenth-century idealists from Shelley to Tolstoy, these dreams stirred in us the sense of a society in bonds and of a great liberation entrusted to our age to accomplish. The very thought of that bondage was part of the dream, as, moved alternately by imaginative distress over the evils suggested and by literary pleasure in the stinging eloquence, we pondered in seclusion the splendid invectives against modern civilization penned by the great masters. The captivity of the workers, the apathy of the privileged, the manifold miseries and deformities of modern life, were seen as through a haze.

But the realities that inspired the invectives were never far away in Victorian England or modern America ; and the sharp shock of waking contact with them was sure to come. It might be given by the sight of the stream of faces pouring sullen and sodden from some factory door of an evening, or by revulsion from the hideous squalor of the approach to some great city watched through train windows ; or it might well reach us through relation to some individual in distress, some human derelict, impossible to place in the whirring machine of production, a gruesome, pitiful product of social conditions so inexorable that no sentimental platitude nor casual benevolence had any bearing on the case. So, in one way or another, dreams led out to the waking spectacle of civilization as it is ; incredibly wasteful, impossibly cruel, — so complex and seemingly inevitable a thing that the mind was forced to accept as a necessity what revolted the heart as a monstrosity. The Social Problem was before us, and life had begun.

And out of the region where dreams and realities blend, came clear and strong the Call of the Open Road : the summons to action, confusedly but with ever-increasing emphasis voiced by our most honored masters from the time of Carlyle. This might sound from the lips of Ruskin, of Mazzini, of some young preacher unknown to history, or of a mere grave-eyed acquaintance. It bade us leave the perplexities of speculation and reflection, and bend us to the deed:

what deed, but the sacred Service of the People ? By dozens and by hundreds, young men and women heard and obeyed the call. Those were the days of the eighties and the nineties which witnessed in Europe and the United States a gradual introduction of new life into the dry science of political economy, a quickening of the civic conscience, and an active development of social service in manifold forms. That gentle, fiery spirit, Prince Kropotkin, noted in those days among the flower of young English men and women a movement akin to that Return to the People which had lately stirred Young Russia to the depths and been so delicately depicted by Tourgenieff in " Virgin Soil " ; albeit Kropotkin observed the decorous English movement to call for less fervor of martyrdom. Did it indeed call for martyrdom at all, this modern impulse toward social service ? Certainly, the happiness of release was more than any pain of renunciation, when first we learned to escape the barriers of class, breathe the free air of human fellowship, and regard those terrors of disease and poverty which we confronted, no longer as a mere horrid Darkness blackening the sky and baffling the fighter, but as a substantial stronghold of wrongs that could be attacked, and perhaps overcome.

So the great appeal to the conscience of the privileged classes which had during all the nineteenth century kept pace with the rise of capitalism and industrialism bore fruit in action; and it came to pass, curiously enough, that by the end of the century the word 44 social" had changed its connotation, and from suggesting the gayeties of the drawing-room came currently to imply the ardors of a new crusade. The " Social Movement " ! How swiftly it developed, adopted by countless organizations, religious and secular, offering scope for every type of capacity, and accepting all degrees of service, from a languid subscription to a consecrated life !

And here we well may pause for an instant : for here is the last point which we are likely to reach in this book, of positive unchallenged gain to the uneasy social conscience. Very great is that gain, surely. It means that an epoch and an anguish lie behind us. No one to-day, longing to join the task of social amelioration, lacks opportunities for work. In some company of the valiant hosts attacking the forts of folly, in some phase of the fourfold service enjoined by Ruskin, — dressing people, feeding people, housing people, or rightly pleasing people, — every temperament and capacity can find effective place. Through the fifties and sixties of the last century, men eager for social service echoed half-paralyzed the baffled cry of Clough, written in the memorable year 1848 : 1 —

If there is battle, 't is battle by night, I stand in the darkness.

O that the armies indeed were arrayed ! O joy of the onset ! Sound, thou Trumpet of God, come forth, Great Cause, to array us,

King and leader appear, thy soldiers sorrowing seek thee. Would that the armies indeed were arrayed ! Oh where is the battle !

Neither battle I see, nor arraying, nor king in Israel,

Only infinite jumble and mess and dislocation, Backed by a solemn appeal, For God's sake, do not stir, there.

We may be grateful that those days are over, and that the plain path to practical service has been opened by the modern movement of philanthropy to whosoever wills to tread it.

It is the old path, of course, trodden in every age, not only by the saints, but by throngs of their nameless followers. And now as always he who follows it enters into that inheritance which only the meek can know. So far as the attainment of peace at the centre and joy that is not fugitive is concerned, no other path through experience has ever been blazed. Throngs are seeking this path to-day: a few embracing Lady Poverty in the city slums with an ardor equal to that of the first Franciscans, and devoting themselves to the service of "Our Lords the Poor," with a tenderness no less keen than that of the Catherines of Siena and Genoa, because more guarded in method and more efficient in result. Even the world hails them as fortunate ; for while it pursues its own way, it has always in a dim theoretical fashion recognized selfless devotion to be the highest good, and paid fullest honors to the servants of humanity, at least after they have died.

III

If personal peace were the end of conduct, our story might end here. But it is only begun. For such peace can satisfy no one born anew in the spirit of democracy. Only a fulfillment of the angelic prophecy, " Peace on Earth," can meet our need.

Here we touch one of the widest differences separating the idealism of the modern western world from that of the Orient or of mediaeval Catholicism. The way of sacrifice has always been known to the initiate as the only way of life. But that sacrifice has been subtly interwoven with egotism, to be recognized no less in the Buddhist, winning by deeds of charity the " merit " to speed him on his journey to Nirvana, than in the Catholic ascetic, 44 earning Heaven," though it were the pure heaven of union with his crucified Lord, through self -mortification and mercy. Who would deny that fine impulses of love and pity blended in 1x>th cases with the individualist motive of exalted self-realization ? To console the afflicted, to rescue the perishing, to minister to the sick, has ever brought holy delight and satisfied deep needs of affection. Yet these tender ministries have been habitually exerted as ends in themselves, destined to find ultimate value less in the bodily good of him who received them than in the spiritual salvation of him who gave.

Certainly they were included in no larger scheme of general social rehabilitation. Nor could they be so ; for a personal and self-centred point of view was imposed by the limitations of the contemporary outlook. The larger tides of human destiny formerly either ebbed and flowed unnoted, or were considered to be independent of human control. In such days, the anguished compassion which has always filled noble hearts at the spectacle of mortal misery could be assuaged only by devotion to the individual leper, the special case of need. That suffering as a whole was an evil to be attacked, that our aim should be less to serve than to abolish it, would have been an attitude inconceivable to the mediaeval mind.

Times have changed. A sense of power, troubling, imperious, has descended upon us. We do not yet know very well what to do with it, but we cannot escape it. Belief in the divine possibilities of men quickens our expectant wills : —

" Thou art a man : God is no more : Thine own humanity learn to adore,"

cried William Blake at the beginning of the modern ' democratic epoch. Conscious of mystical union with the proletarian and the outcast, assured that they and we united can shape the world as we will, we rise to the splendid summons. Reinforcement comes from our recently acquired knowledge that the only sure fact is ceaseless flux, in the social as in the natural order.

The simple, depressing instincts of pre-democratic, pre-evolutionary days still largely dominate our social creeds and deeds. We talk much of brotherhood : but our democratic faith seldom penetrates below the surface of our theories or actions. Evolutionary language is always on our lips : but we direct our social activities as if change on broad lines were inconceivable, aud we condemned helplessly to minister to the end of time, within the limits of a static stratified society, to the same old needs forever generated by the same old situation. Yet we are growing restive. Through these fatalistic instincts the wind of a larger hope has begun to blow. As it revives us, the old conception of " earning Heaven " ceases to interest, while at the same time we cannot stay content with helping the individual here and there. Modern times have not abolished the old ideal of sanctity, but they have made a distinct addition to it. They put stress on a new " note " : efficiency, with which we may be sure none of the older saints ever bothered themselves. We " children of process " have been rising, during the last twenty-five years, to the conviction that it is our task, not only to relieve the wretched but to fight the causes of wretchedness. Even while the modern Good Samaritan binds the wounds of the wayfarer, he meditates how to free the road from robbers. He can no longer be content to soothe his own soul by lavishing personal devotion while a mountain of social injustice awaits the potent faith that shall speak the liberating word.

IV

And thus the question rose, as to the value and efficiency of those ministries so ardently pursued. Did they meet the situation ? Putting mind as well as heart on the matter, could we honestly feel that the indefinite multiplication of such agencies as occupied us, whether these happened to be organized charities, peoples' institutes, soup-kitchens or missions, would ever bring effectual satisfaction to the needs we sought to relieve? To put the question marked a new stage of progress. Then as now it received answers which divided men into opposing schools. But those were many, and they increased daily, who in the light of it found their most ardent social efforts chilled by doubt.

These efforts, as the years went on, tended to change in character. For the social movement deepened as it advanced. From works of mercy and relief on conventional lines, it developed phases ever more democratic and more imbued with a demand for justice. At the outset it was prone to regard the unfortunate as weaklings, to be saved from the logical results of their moral and practical feebleness by a pity perilously near to impatience and not untouched with contempt. But as time passed, men were forced to the startling perception that the poverty which was the destruction of the poor was created less by themselves than by the society in which they played their helpless part

This was a great discovery. It meant the gradual abandonment of philanthropy for reform, — an abandonment still half-conscious, but unmistakably to be traced as we look back. Reform, giving up hope that the individual could ever be set on his feet within an unchanged situation, faced in a new direction, and demanded, that in large or in little this situation be changed.

Did the new start mean effectual advance toward a land of justice? Whether or no, the application of moral force to social conditions went on merrily and earnestly. The words of the great teachers were not unheeded. Compunction became more and more poignant, driving increasing numbers to social service through sheer discomfort. Even that much-scouted agency, the Church, played a modest but growing part in quickening such compunction and diverting energy into selfless channels. So before the end of the century here were scientific charity, standing for more or less intelligent care of our victims, and sundry attempts at deeper fellowship, ending in that most significant expression of social chivalry, the settlement movement. Many another constructive activity, initiated and administered by those children of privilege who respond to moral stimuli, began to crystallize. New every morning, fresh every evening, leagues were formed, committees appointed, for fighting salient evils : for protecting childhood, cleansing politics, eliminating disease, for regulating in myriad ways the unbridled passions of self-interest and greed that have created our unlovely civilization. That new crusade whose call we had answered gathered its hosts to fight the serried forces of industrial and social wrong ; every day new members joined it, — valiant spirits, happiest of modern men and women, on pilgrimage to the Holy City of social peace.