Whatever is in store for social work it is pre-ordained that its functions can only persist by adaptive variation of its practices, that it will never be perfected, never be satisfied, never even, in any final and completed sense, successful. Its object is to correct the mistakes of nature and man in the making of human lives and its undertakings grow with our hopes for life. Such presumption can never succeed, but its mere instalments of success would be triumphs in a lesser enterprise. For social work each new triumph opens only a new range of possibilities. It might well take as its motto the proud words of Masefield, “Success is the brand on the forehead for having aimed too low.”[80] FOOTNOTES: [61] Philanthropy and the State, p. 303. [62] John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, p. 577. [63] Ibid., p. 575. [64] William McDougal, An Introduction to Social Psychology, p. 14, et seq. [65] Porter R. Lee, at the National Conference of Social Work, 1920, p. 468. [66] Charities Review, 1898, p. 9. [67] Hamlet, Act III, Sc. 2, line 379. [68] Emil Muensterberg, Impressions of American Charity, in Charity and the Commons, 1907, p. 268. [69] H. G. Wells, The Outline of History, Vol. II, p. 339. [70] John Boyle O’Reilly, In Bohemia, quoted in The Cry for Justice, p. 497. [71] S. A. Queen, Social Work in the Light of History, Chap. II. [72] Sidney and Beatrice Webb, The Prevention of Destitution, p. 281. [73] Arthur J. Todd, at the National Conference, 1920, p. 271. [74] Charles A. Ellwood, at the National Conference, 1920, p. 271. [75] Count Leo Tolstoy, quoted in The Cry for Justice, p. 88. [76] Arthur Hugh Clough, “Say not the struggle nought availeth,” in Poems. [77] Frank Parsons, Legal Doctrine and Social Progress, p. 212. [78] John Masefield, A Consecration, in Poems. [79] Philanthropy and the State, p. 20. [80] John Masefield, Multitude and Solitude. APPENDIX I =Edward T. Devine in “Social Work”= says (p. 21): “Social work, then is the sum of all the efforts made by society to ‘take up its own slack’ to provide for individuals when its established institutions fail them, to supplement those established institutions and to modify them at those points at which they have proved to be badly adapted to social needs. * * * It may be well done or badly done; according to the most enlightened system which intelligence and experience and sympathy and vision can devise or according to the archaic methods of careless and lazy emotion. * * * It includes everything which is done by society for the benefit of those who are not in position to compete on fair terms with their fellows from whatever motive it may be done, by whatever agency or whatever means and with whatever results.”