Such institutions are intended for the general good. By identifying ourselves with them we both share in that good and exercise an impartial love for mankind. For these have an influence over men unequalled by any other agency. They fashion us in our unconscious years and carry forward our purposes in years of discretion. To comprehend their consolidated wisdom and conform ourselves to it will be our chief means of serving our fellow men; to neglect or weaken them through individual caprice is to be an enemy of society. Only we must discriminate in our modes of strengthening. An institution is not proved good by the bare fact of its existence. Perhaps the presumption should be in its favor, for it could hardly get itself established if injurious. But its original adaptation to human wants is unstable, and strengthening it will really mean fitting it more neatly to present circumstances. To maintain its outward form when it no longer serves its purpose is to be unfaithful to it. Constructive criticism is constantly required if institutions are to be kept sweet and wholesome. Only it should be borne in mind that changes in the framework of society can best come about slowly and only at the desire of large groups of those affected. Presumptuous, indeed, is he who will attempt to stand outside any of our fundamental institutions. The setting up of his individual will against the general will proves him no true socialist. He should remember that since everybody is wiser than anybody his first business is to conform to the institutions into which he is born, then to study elaborately their meaning, and finally to persuade his fellows to join in readjusting them with a view to their more effective working. Our love for our fellow men is shown each day in our maintenance, critical study, and reform of the social institutions around us. They survive only through our constant approval, are too important to be neglected or lightly set aside, and too liable to decay to be left uncriticised. It is obvious, however, that institutions are of many grades of importance. Some are fundamental, as the family, property, democracy; others are local and individual, as Harvard University, Boston, the Episcopal Church, the Democratic Party. As they become narrower our acceptance of them changes its character, affectionate loyalty playing a larger part, dutiful obedience less. A member of a college, for example, comes to think of it almost as a person, symbolized in Alma Mater, and gives to it the loving devotion he would feel for a revered friend. Members of institutions so individual are apt to take their membership as something like a personal trust and to pride themselves on fidelity to it. But because such institutions are of limited range and not applicable to all mankind, failure in allegiance to them is generally regarded not as a moral lapse, but as an error of judgment.