Social work is interested in all people that need help and classifies them according to their needs, with no ulterior interest. It tries to serve them in their individual capacity as human beings with lives of their own. It is always extending benefits in excess of any recognized obligation. These we have heretofore said were the habits of charity, using the word in a broad and primitive sense. When charity adopted a scientific method and took to studying the social sciences for light on its problems social work began. Although it has been necessary to refer to charity often and at length in establishing the nature of social work, it is not well to dwell on it in general discussion, because, first, it has lately been applied only to the relief of poverty and cannot be used in a wider sense without explanation and, secondly, through centuries of association with an idea of meritorious liberality towards persons inferior, it has acquired connotations which do not belong to social work. Social work as we now have it makes use of modern science. From the social sciences it takes perspective, generalization and knowledge of the complication of influences responsible for any given situation. By statistical methods it relates cause and effect. The discovery of such a relationship always emphasizes causes and in consequence social work extends its protective function in the direction of prevention. By so doing it becomes not only a minister to misery but also one of the forces operating to make the world a better dwelling place for all of its inhabitants. Social work because it is tentative and experimental seems to be imperfectly developed and still on trial. There is a temptation to anticipate for it more certainty, more obvious consistency and more clearly formulated purposes when it shall have become better established. But any such anticipation fails to take account of its wholly relative nature. Social work is always feeling its way beyond clearly formulated obligations, ignoring imposed consistencies and groping in unexplored regions where sure-footedness is not possible. Social work will take many more forms and all of them will prove temporary.