The general fact is that the activities of life, to which feeling responds, have become more various and subtle and less crudely determined by animal conditions. Material variety and comfort is one phase of this: we become habituated to a comparatively delicate existence and so are trained to shun coarseness. Communication, by giving abundance and choice of social contacts, also acts to diversify and refine sentiment; the growth of order disaccustoms us to violence, and democracy tends to remove the degrading spectacle of personal or class oppression. This modern refinement has the advantage that, being a general rise in level rather than the achievement of a class or a nation, it is probably secure. It is not, like the refinement of Greece, the somewhat precarious fruit of transient conditions, but a possession of the race, in no more danger of dying out than the steam-engine. To the trend toward humanism and the sentiments—such as justice, truth, kindness and service—that go with it, I shall devote the rest of this chapter and the one that follows: The basis of all sentiment of this kind is the sense of community, or of sharing in a common social or spiritual whole, membership in which gives to all a kind of inner equality, no matter what their special parts may be. It is felt, however, that the differences among men should be functional and intrinsic, not arbitrary or accidental. The sense of justice is usually strong among the members of a sympathetic group, the basis for determining what is just being the perception of some purpose which every one is to serve, each in his own way, so that he who rightly holds a higher place is the one who can function best for the common good. It does not hurt my self-respect or my allegiance to remain a common seaman while another becomes captain of the ship, provided I recognize that he is the fitter man for the place; and if the distribution of stations in society were evidently of this sort there would be no serious protest against it. What makes trouble is the growth of an ideal of fair play which the actual system of things does not satisfy. The widening of sympathy and the consciousness of larger unity have brought the hope and demand for a corresponding extension of justice; and all sorts of humanity—not to speak of the lower animals—profit by this wider sentiment. Classes seek to understand each other; the personality of women and children is recognized and fostered; there is some attempt to sympathize with alien nations and races, civilized or savage, and to help them to their just place in the common life of mankind.