Perhaps the general attitude has not really changed.  We persecute more for political than for religious unorthodoxy; or it may be that in our more economic age we forbear to burn heretics only because we cannot afford the faggots.  But in any case the relations between men in society are more justly arranged, even where religion is concerned.

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We have thus examples of (1) joint governmental action and (2) separate actions of governments influenced directly by foreign governments.

There are also certain results of the interchange of ideals between nations which are not yet, or only in part, registered in legal or political institutions.  Such for example is the changed position given to women.  A change has occurred quite outside the political or even the economic sphere, both in the habits of western humanity and in their guiding conceptions.

The change is affecting the meaning of marriage, since we are becoming inclined to suppose that man and woman are not simply male and female.  Human individuality is given a new value; and there is no telling yet what the new attitude may involve in lessening the friction due to primitive and obsolete tradition or in making society more reasonable and civilized.  The source of the change is undoubtedly an enthusiasm which has been influenced by men and women of all nations.  Ibsen has a place in the history of social transformation.  And besides, the contact between nations has made it possible for the freer position of women in one group to affect the domestic slavery of another.

In the position of children, also, an immense change is proceeding.  We cannot fail to call it social reform, that the child should be given so much more definite a place in the social organism.  Aristotle thought woman was a mistake of nature’s in the attempt to make man; and nearly all philosophers have treated children as if they ought to be rather ashamed of themselves for not being grown up.  I speak of philosophers in the wide sense of the term, for I do not think the metaphysicians knew that there was such a thing as a child in the universe.  However that may be, we can hardly believe that as late as the nineteenth century parents really imagined that they knew what was good for their children.  In our more sceptical age, children have generally to be careful not to allow their parents to read certain books, and in every well brought up family, it is thought that parents should be seen and not heard.  A social change has occurred in the comparative importance we assign to childhood and age.