ideal. We may put aside the long history of the
growth of this shared enthusiasm for better relations between men,
whatever their ability, their rank, their race, or their government.

The common ideals of the present are the result of a gradual
development, but we shall consider them here as attempts to deal with
existing evils and plans for a better future.

* * * * *

Some social evils of the present are perhaps as old as any settled
civilization. Such are disease and personal violence. Some are due to
forces which have come into existence recently, owing to increased
communication and accumulated wealth. Such are extreme poverty and the
dehumanizing of social relations. With both kinds of evil we are moved
to deal, and we are not deterred from the attempt to reform even
long-established evil; for we feel that we do not know what is possible.
Nothing is inevitable. This is not the place to give in detail the
description of those evils which are being dealt with. It is enough if
we recognize that it is no abstract or airy theory of equality or human
nature which moves us to action. All real theories are intensely
personal: and no theory has ever yet moved men unless they saw through
it to the crude facts. However it may be phrased in a theory of society,
we recognize it as evil that disease, leading to premature death, should
be as common as it is. As a social evil it may be said to disturb
seriously the relations between men. We see also that it is a social
evil that men should use fraud or violence in compelling labour or in
the pursuit of riches. Of the newer social evils there is the physical
and spiritual deterioration which seems to result from the massing of
men in great cities. There is also the dehumanizing of the relations
between master and man. And this is like in kind to the dehumanizing of
all functions in the vast institutions of modern times. The director of
a company comes to regard himself as part of a machine; and so does the
shareholder. So eventually does the agent of the State. Until at last we
reach the immense evil that human action is done for which no moral
responsibility is felt. How then shall we act? What has been done and
what is still hoped for? The answer to such questions will be a
statement of ideals.

One may speak of ideals of social reform from two different points of
view; either with respect to (1) the changing sentiment which produces
movements