The present way of thinking tends to close up this chasm and bring both persons and ideals into more intelligible relations to real life. The sins or virtues of the individual, it seems, are never fortuitous or disconnected; they have always a history and collateral support, and are in fact more or less pleasing phases of a struggling, aspiring whole. The ideals are also parts of the whole; states of being, achieved momentarily by those in front and treasured for the animation and solace of all. And the method of righteousness is to understand as well as may be the working of this whole and of all its parts, and to form and pursue practicable ideals based on this understanding. It is always to be taken for granted that there is no real break with history and environment. Each individual may be required to put forth a steadfast endeavor to make himself and his surroundings better, but not to achieve a standard unconnected with his actual state. And the same principle applies to special groups of all sorts, including nations, races, and religions; their progress must be along a natural line of improvement suggested by what they are. We are thus coming under the sway of that relative spirit, of which, says Walter Pater, “the ethical result is a delicate and tender justice in the criticism of human life.”[3] According to this, real reform must be sympathetic; that is, it must begin, not with denunciation—though that may have its uses—but with an intimate appreciation of things as they are, and should proceed in a spirit opposite to that in which we have commonly attacked such questions as the suppression of intemperance and the conversion of the heathen. Human nature, it appears, is very much the same in those we reckon sinners as in ourselves. Good and evil are always intimately bound up together; no sort of men are chiefly given over to conscious badness; and to abuse men or groups in the large is unjust and generally futile. As a rule the practical method is to study closely and kindly the actual situation, with the people involved in it; then gradually and carefully to work out the evil from the mixture by substituting good for it. No matter how mean or hideous a man’s life is, the first thing is to understand him; to make out just how it is that our common human nature has come to work out in this way. This method calls for patience, insight, firmness, and confidence in men, leaving little room for the denunciatory egotism of a certain kind of reformers. It is more and more coming to be used in dealing with intemperance, crime, greed, and in fact all those matters in which we try to make ourselves and our neighbors better. I notice that the most effectual leaders of philanthropy have almost ceased from denunciation. Tacitly assuming that there are excuses for everything, they “shun the negative side” and spend their energy in building up the affirmative.