circumspection, and of a keen intelligence on the part of the statesman, the jurist, or the moralist, that grave errors can be avoided, and an adequate estimate of the probable results can be formed.  The mere instinct of the community, unmodified and uncorrected by the conscious speculations of its more thoughtful members, would be in much danger of either causing a large amount of needless suffering to the criminal, or of seriously diminishing the security of society.  It would almost certainly be guilty of grave inequalities in the apportionment of punishment to specific crimes.  The history of slavery similarly shews the importance of the functions of the moralist and the reformer.  It must have been at the suggestion of some prominent member of a tribe, whose intelligence was in advance of that of his fellows, that men first took to capturing their defeated enemies, with a view to future service, instead of slaughtering them on the field of battle.  And we know that, in the time of Plato and Aristotle, there had already arisen a strong sentiment against the enslaving of Greeks by Greeks, originating probably in the instinctive sympathy of race, but quickened and fostered, doubtless, by the superior capacity which men possess of realising suffering and misfortune in those who are constituted and endowed like themselves, by the new conception of a Pan-hellenic unity, and by the vivid sense which, on reflexion, the citizens of each state must have entertained of their own liability to be reduced, in turn, to the same condition.  In modern times, the movement which has led to the entire abolition of slavery in civilized countries owes much, undoubtedly, to the softened manners and wider sympathies of a society largely transformed by the combined operation of Christianity and culture, but it has been promoted, to no inconsiderable degree, by conscious reflexion and direct argument.  Social and religious reasons, derived from the community of nature and origin in man, reinforced by a vivid realisation of the sufferings of others, and appealing forcibly to the tender and sympathetic feelings, have co-operated with the economical considerations drawn from the wastefulness and comparative inefficiency of slave labour, and with what may be called the self-regarding reason of the hardening and debasing effect of slave-owning on the character of the slave-owner himself.

It will be sufficient, in this connexion, simply to allude to the ideals of mercy, purity, humility, long-suffering, and self-denial, which are pourtrayed in the Christian teaching and have, ever since the early days of Christianity, exercised so vast and powerful an influence on large sections of mankind.