hy." At the very best, one of us fails in one way and another
in another, if we do not fail altogether. Therefore the man under the
tree is the one of us who for the moment is smitten. It may be you
to-morrow, and I next day. It is the common frailty in the midst of a
common peril which gives us a kind of solidarity of interest to rescue
the one for whom the chances of life have turned out badly just now.
Probably the victim is to blame. He almost always is so. A lecture to
that effect in the crisis of his peril would be out of place, because
it would not fit the need of the moment; but it would be very much in
place at another time, when the need was to avert the repetition of
such an accident to somebody else. Men, therefore, owe to men, in the
chances and perils of this life, aid and sympathy, on account of the
common participation in human frailty and folly. This observation,
however, puts aid and sympathy in the field of private and personal
relations, under the regulation of reason and conscience, and gives no
ground for mechanical and impersonal schemes.

We may, then, distinguish four things:

1. The function of science is to investigate truth. Science is
colorless and impersonal. It investigates the force of gravity, and
finds out the laws of that force, and has nothing to do with the weal
or woe of men under the operation of the law.

2. The moral deductions as to what one ought to do are to be drawn by
the reason and conscience of the individual man who is instructed by
science. Let him take note of the force of gravity, and see to it that
he does not walk off a precipice or get in the way of a falling body.

3. On account of the number and variety of perils of all kinds by which
our lives are environed, and on account of ignorance, carelessness, and
folly, we all neglect to obey the moral deductions which we have
learned, so that, in fact, the wisest and the best of us act foolishly
and suffer.

4. The law of sympathy, by which we share each others' burdens, is to
do as we would be done by. It is not a scientific principle, and does
not admit of such generalization or interpretation that A can tell B
what this law enjoins on B to do. Hence the relations of sympathy and
sentiment are essentially limited to two persons only, and they cannot
be made a basis for the relations of groups of persons, or for
discussion by any third party.

Social improvement is not to be won by direct effort. It is secondary,