That social work, as a calling, does not make itself tributary to any one social philosophy casts no suspicion on its integrity. Nor is it strange that the majority of social workers individually should continue to hold, on the subject of revolution, the opinions of the majority of their fellow citizens. That social workers should become so much interested in their own methods of relief as to forget the prime object of all their system, that they should become so devoted to the success of particular undertakings as to be unobservant of other and perhaps better attempts to relieve needs is a reproach to the guilty persons but it no more touches the principles and functions of social work than similar faults of practitioners in other lines condition the presumptive functions of their respective callings. Were this a discussion of social work in practice it would be necessary to consider the degree to which its practitioners have realized its possibilities. But a study of the nature and functions of social work such as this purports to be would lose itself in confusion in any attempt to determine precisely how far instances have run true to type. The teaching offered by the schools and the interests reflected in the National Conference prove beyond a doubt the direction of its main stream. The charge we have just been discussing is the last of the major accusations commonly brought against social work, and the definition we have been using has now been shown to describe a social work that can meet its critics squarely and retain a claim to a function of its own in social economy and a certain character and integrity. It is one of those human activities which are pursued, as we say, for their own sake. It can be justified on utilitarian grounds but the justification never amounts to more than permission to follow our inclination untroubled. Yet, unlike other such activities, unlike recreation, art and learning, it does not reach out to life at its happiest and most conscious, its fullest and finest, but seeks, “Rather the scorned--the rejected--the men hemmed in by the spears.” Social work lifts burdens, fills needs, extends benefits. “Not the ruler for me, but the ranker, the tramp of the road, The slave with the sack on his shoulder, pricked on with the goad, The man with too weighty a burden, too weary a load. * * * * * Others may sing of the wine and the wealth and the mirth, The portly presence of potentates goodly in girth; Mine be the dirt and the dross, the dust and scum of the earth.”[78]