In these days of general literacy, many get their most potent impressions from books, and some, finding this sort of society more select and stimulating than any other, cultivate it to the neglect of palpable persons. This kind of people often have a very tender conscience regarding the moral problems presented in novels, but a rather dull one for those of the flesh-and-blood life about them. In fact, a large part of the sentiments of imaginative persons are purely literary, created and nourished by intercourse with books, and only indirectly connected with what is commonly called experience. Nor should it be assumed that these literary sentiments are necessarily a mere dissipation. Our highest ideals of life come to us largely in this way, since they depend upon imaginative converse with people we do not have a chance to know in the flesh. Indeed, the expansion of conscience that is so conspicuous a fact of recent years, the rise of moral sentiment regarding international relations, alien races and social and industrial classes other than our own, could not have taken place without the aid of cheap printing and rapid communication. Such understanding and sense of obligation as we have regarding the populace of great cities, for instance, is due chiefly to writers who, like the author of “How the Other Half Lives,” describe the life of such people in a vivid, personal way, and so cause us to imagine it. Not to pursue this line of thought too far, it is enough for our purpose to note that conscience is always a group conscience, however the group may be formed, so that our moral sentiment always reflects our time, our country, and our special field of personal imagination. On the other hand, our sense of right ignores those whom we do not, through sympathy, feel as part of ourselves, no matter how close their physical contiguity. To the Norman conqueror the Saxon was an inferior animal, whose sentiments he no more admitted to his imagination, I suppose, than a farmer does those of his cattle, and toward whom, accordingly, he did not feel human obligation. It was the same with the slaveholder and the slave, and so it sometimes is with employer and wage-earner. The behavior of the Europeans toward the Chinese during the recent invasion of China showed in a striking manner how completely moral obligation breaks down in dealing with people who are not felt to be of kindred humanity with ourselves. In minds capable of constructive imagination the social factor in conscience may take the form of ideal persons, whose traits are used as a standard of behavior.