Now that political privilege and inequality before the law are more or less removed, there is a greater concentration upon the underlying social injustice.  We all accept it as good that the activities of government should not be for the benefit of the few, or that the money should not be drawn from one class.  We suppose at least that there should be one law for rich and poor.

To any one with a knowledge of history this seems an immense step since small classes in every nation held political privilege, made law for others, and forced tribute from the majority.  Not that all is justice and liberty.  The law still, with noble impartiality, forbids both the millionaire and the pauper to steal bread.  Of course it is not directed against the poor.  The law never forbids the poor man to cheat the state out of more than L3,000 a year.  Again, political power still depends on the social position of your cousins and your aunts.  But something has been done.

We hear much more nowadays about social than about political or legal reform.  That, in itself, is a sign of a change of attitude.  In the revolution of 1381 the crowds came marching to London swearing, in the words of the old chronicle, that there would be no peace in the land till each and every lawyer was slain.  In the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 it was ‘death to the politicians’.  Now—­it may be that we despair of lawyers or politicians, dead or alive.  In any case the attention of those in every state who are moved by enthusiasm for a better society is concentrated less upon votes and laws than upon the distribution of well-being.

Secondly, there has been a transference of enthusiasm of the religious or poetic kind from the sphere of contemplation or aloofness to that of earthly and even material action.  Ideals of social reform do not any longer involve a neglect of food and clothing:  we are all more and more convinced that it is idle to preach culture to a starving man, or to talk of liberty to one whose whole life is a bestial struggle for bare food and covering.  I speak of normal times.  In England, France, and Germany, social betterment means giving to a greater number security of bare life, upon which alone the good life can be built.

It will be seen that I imply a disagreement with the Tolstoian conception of reform; in so far as that involves a neglect of food and clothing and generally of what are called material goods.  That conception is not perhaps powerful among those who deal with what is usually called social reform.  It is not ‘modern’, and it is also dependent upon a mistaken argument in ethical theory.  An unfortunate confusion made by what is called Eastern, Stoic, or Mediaeval asceticism led to the idea that because the mind is more important than the body, the body has no importance at all.  But we need not deal with this theory in detail, especially as the general attitude of to-day is opposed to it.  There is undoubtedly a concentration upon the bare necessities of human life with a view to discovering how these can be shared more generally.