The _department of human affairs_ in which social work operates is that indicated by the word “social”; men’s relations to each other rather than their relations to nature. The _interest_ inherited from charity is an interest in untoward situations; social work, like charity turns like a compass to the magnet of need; opportunity, success, superiority do not attract it unless they are beset with some difficulty which it can remove; handicap, deprivation, insufficiency offer the challenge to which it responds. The _method_ adopted from science is that of observation and generalization; social work has established the fact that just as man cannot live without a certain food supply, so he cannot thrive as a conscious being without a modicum of interest, incentive, and leeway of freedom, so that matters long considered intimate and implicit have now become the objects of close and deliberate observation. And just as men, endlessly varied in physical appearance are to the physiologist of one general pattern and as, far more strangely, the infinite variety of mind is known by the psychologist to have its common laws of operation, so, strangest and most illusive of all, men individually unpredictable, do yet, in the main, follow laws of social behaviour which it is in the power of an observer to detect. We can say that the main act and final object of social work are those of charity. The means and methods are those of science moving in the fields of charitable concern. Social work seems to comprise a group of allied activities called by a common name and considered to be but various phases of a single undertaking because they are all engaged in spontaneous efforts to extend benefits in response to the evidence of need; they all show a major interest in improving the social relationship of their beneficiaries and all avail themselves of scientific knowledge and employ scientific methods. We may propose as a tentative definition, to be tested and carried further in the chapters which follow, that social work includes all voluntary attempts to extend benefits in response to need which are concerned with social relationships and which avail themselves of scientific knowledge and employ scientific methods. FOOTNOTES: [18] Professor C. A. Ellwell, in Charities and the Commons for 1907, p. 187. [19] Beatrice and Sidney Webb, The Prevention of Destitution, p. 330. [20] Owen R. Lovejoy, Proceedings of National Conference of Social Work, 1919, pp. 666-7. [21] Mary E. Richmond, Ibid. 1920, p. 254. [22] Mary E. Richmond, Social Diagnosis, p. 29. [23] Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House, p. 162. [24] See especially Mary E. Richmond, What Is Social Case Work? [25] Beatrice and Sidney Webb, The Prevention of Destitution, p. 333.