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 for reform or with respect to (2) the institutional change which embodies that sentiment.  The two are complementary parts of one historical movement:  and it is difficult to divide them as cause and effect.  For sentiment, becoming enthusiasm, certainly causes institutional change, and yet the reformed institution invariably creates a new sentiment.  The province of law and of social custom is to lead as well as to register—­a dynamic as well as a static influence, to increase order and to incite to liberty.  In actual life, therefore, it is often impossible to separate the sentiment from its embodiment in measures of social reform.

For purposes of study, however, one may divide.  We may put aside the moving sentiments—­the passions, however faint, which urge men to wish for a better future—­and we may consider first the particular instances of reform.

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One definite and in some sense new departure in the results of the shared enthusiasms of nations has been the industrial legislation of recent years.  That has been already dealt with.  But, although in an economic age such as ours industrial reform may seem the most striking, it is not the only effect of our shared enthusiasm and later ages may not think it the most important.  There has been reform of social evils owing to the interchange between nations of ideas on education, religious toleration, medicine, and sanitation, the treatment of criminals, the suppression of slavery and many other subjects.  All these and many more reforms are, as it were, registered in institutional (legal or administrative) change.

Perhaps it is better to begin with a definite instance of the working of an ideal, lest it may seem that we are speaking only of an empty aspiration.  We may take as an example the reforms connected with medicine and sanitation, and those only in so far as they have been officially established by the joint action of states.  This is a very restricted embodiment of a social ideal, since of course we may find the same use of common labour between men of different races in the private contest with disease or in the municipal preventive medicine which in every great city owes much to investigators and practitioners of other nations.  But it is better to take the most tangible effect in purely governmental action.