OUT of political economy has grown, by a natural process. of evolution and expansion, that larger science known as sociology, a science that deals with the entire psychic life of man in so far as the forces that underlie it are called into activity by his civic life. Almost up to the present time it has been held by the great majority of Christian people that in order to better the condition of men, both at home and in foreign lands, it was only necessary to preach the Gospel to them; while those whose condition could not be improved here. below were taught to anticipate compensating happiness in the next world in an inverse ratio to the privations suffered in this. Now, however, few persons are content to wait until another life shall furnish them the means of enjoyment; the great majority want their full share as they live from day to day. Here, too, the felt need has provided the supply, in part at least, and the promise of it in greater abundance as the years shall go by.

This state of things, though by no means to be deplored, has like every good brought in its train a number of evils. It has engendered a widespread desire on the part of many, amounting often to a demand, that they should be allowed not only to decide for themselves what sort of enjoyment and how much, this world shall provide for them, but also who shall provide it. The proverbial modern rush after riches is the best evidence of this on the one part, and the various schemes proposed by which all may have an equal share of this world's goods, on the other. Whether the relations between employer and employed are at present more "strained" than they ever were before, is a question that no man, unless he is as old as an antediluvian, can decide fairly; but certain it is that these relations are receiving an unwonted share of attention, both at the hands of the law-making powers and the general public all over the civilized world. An element of confusion has been introduced into the traditional conceptions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, except as they may have been set forth in the treatise of some philosopher, who found solace in the creation of an imaginary realm in which it was made plain how much better this world would be if only it were different. One

of the most marked signs of the times is the enormous increase of legislative activity. The popular cry is: Let us have a law for this, or a law against that. The trend of the times is toward state socialism, and a great many persons are of the opinion that men would be all their neighbors wish them to be, if only the proper legislation could be had. Both the movement toward communism and that toward socialism are unconscious attempts to revert to a condition of things either tried or advocated millenniums ago. They are advocated by men, who for the most part know little of history and probably care Movement and agitation are not necessarily progress, though there can be no progress without both. Society is such a complex entity, that it may grow in some parts and remain stationary or retrograde in others. Or it may advance in the form of a spiral and repeat its former experiments under somewhat similar conditions. It can not be thought surprising that the world learns so slowly. There is a large measure of truth in the sneering words of Schopenhauer:

Brainless pates are the rule, fairly furnished ones the exception, the brilliantly endowed very rare, genius a portentum. How otherwise could we account for the fact that out of upwards of eight hundred millions of people existing human beings, and after the chronicled experience of six thousand years, so much still remains to discover, to think out, and to be said. By far the greater part of humanity are wholly inaccessible to purely intellectual enjoyments. They are quite incapable of the delight that exists in ideas as such, everything standing in a certain relation to their own individual will, in other words, to themselves and their own affairs, In order to interest them, it is necessary that their wills should be acted upon, no matter in how remote a degree.

This is not to be wondered at. Thinking is hard workmuch too hard for the great mass of mankind, and impossible to those who have not been trained to it. Men prefer, in every case of doubt, to fall back on use and wont, to take tradition for their guide and leave the results to the gods. It is so much easier to do this than resolute'y to face new problems day by day and solve them in the light of the new knowledge that dawns upon the world as time passes on. More than a third of a century ago George Eliot wrote:

After all has been said that can be said about the widening influence of ideas, it remains true that they would hardly be such strong agents unless they were taken in a solvent of feeling. The great world-struggle of developing thought is continually foreshadowed in the struggle of the affections seeking a justification for love and hope.

This is not only true, but the statement is susceptible of a much wider application than is here made of it. In the development of society the intellect is like a choice plant springing up and growing amid a luxuriant crop of bushes and brambles that threaten constantly to choke it to death. It is the inextinguishable, vital spark which, while it keeps the body alive, can not secure for it a healthy and rapid growth. Notwithstanding the

fact that human life is so largely governed by feeling, there is no article in the creed of ethnic faith to which civilized men have held with greater tenacity than that which proclaims the doctrine of human responsibility. It is the corner stone upon which every form of civic life is built up. In spite of the powerful counter influence of the Augustinian theology to which men still give a verbal assent, their actions, whether they are of the church or not, persistently belie their professions. If men are responsible to God or to society, their actions must be under the control of a regulative faculty, and this faculty can be nothing else than the reason regulated by the will. But the will to do right profits him nothing who does not know what the right is. If there were some infallible standard by which all men could determine what is right and what is wrong, it would be comparatively easy to reconcile all differences of opinion. When Byron wrote: "Man being reasonable, must get drunk," he made the particular application to a fact of human experience that is capable of wide generalization. The quest after a universal standard is almost as old as the human race; and when even the most thoughtful men have been unable to find it, what wonder is it that the rest have been groping in the dark till now.

There is no absolute standard of right that is capable of being applied to every circumstance that may arise. Right and wrong, justice and injustice, are largely matters of convention; and, therefore, more or less variable according to the condition of society.

The will is but little influenced by knowledge, and the cause that is advocated on grounds of reason alone has a very weak champion. Yet time is an efficient and invincible ally that generally turns the scales in the end. But the men who have diverted the broad current of history farthest aside from its wonted course, were not the great thinkers of the world. They used their intellects and their wills almost exclusively to put into effect the promptings of their feelings. That inexplicable power some men have over their fellows has rarely been founded on a rational basis. We sometimes find ourselves wondering at the shortsightedness and folly of both rulers and subjects when history tells of some great disaster that they have brought upon themselves. There is a sense in which all the evils that have come upon men as the outgrowth of social and civic life might have been avoided. That they are avoidable is the motive that inspires every good citizen, who labors. for the promotion of the public welfare. If they can be prevented in the future, they might have been obviated in the past, for the laws of human conduct are not undeviating, like the laws of the physical nature. On the assumption, then, that man is reasonable and that the ultimate goal of society is the greatest good of the largest number, it ought not to be very difficult of attainment. Yet experience has demonstrated that it is extremely difficult. Men's aims are fairly definite and

their judgment, in the main at least, approximately correct, but in practice they are swayed by all sorts of motives that lead them everywhere, except where they hope to go.

Evolution is constantly throwing more and more light into many hitherto dark nooks and crannies of social life. This doctrine has shown, at least to a small number of careful investigators, that we are much more firmly bound to the remotest past than most people have been aware, or have even suspected. Social and civic institutions could be changed almost in a twinkling, by the united will of any generation; yet they drag along slowly, because fettered by tradition, which only the progress of time can by degrees relax. In every community the progressive forces are represented by the few; the conservative, or static forces, by the vast majority. To the latter, a word that in some way has been adventitiously associated with a hated object often constitutes its entire content and thus becomes an epithet of condemnation that frequently leads to terrible consequences. Owing to a lack of the power of discrimination men can deal only with general ideas. The sting of many an epigram has been deadly. Royalist, republican, revolutionary, have at different times and in different countries been synonymous with traitor. like manner, such harmless terms as skeptic, evolutionist, rationalist, have been used and are still used to fix a stigma on persons who have been among the benefactors of the human race. It is so hard to turn use and wont into new channels, because the masses, however dissatisfied they may be with the past, have a reverence for it, which they rarely take the time or the trouble to analyze.

In

The conservatism of religion has become proverbial, and there is hardly any element of tradition that reformers have been so careful not to antagonize. Yet it is doubtful whether the clergy are more averse to innovation than the legal profession. It is hardly too much to say that a new departure in legal interpretation is more of a rarity than a new departure in theology. Whenever a people have sought a change in the government, retrospection has usually played an important part; they have endeavored to show that under existing conditions they are deprived of rights conceded to their ancestors. This is well exemplified in the speeches which Schiller puts in the mouth of the aged Stauffacher in his Wilhelm Tell.'

Goethe mildly satirizes the conservatism of the legal fraternity in the words of Mephistopheles, thus:

For human laws and rights from sire to son,
Like an hereditary 11! flow on,

From generation dragged to generat on,

And creeping slow from place to place,

Reason is changed to nonsense, good to evil.

Art thou a grandson, woe betide thy case '

Of law they prate, most falsely clep the civil,
But for that right, which from our birth we carry,
'Tis not a word found in their dictionary.