could give a full account of, and possibly ten whom he has had to study from all the points of view that his medical education has made possible for him. His professional life then is not wholly superficial yet does not attempt to deal exhaustively with every case. As I see it, therefore, our work in the social or medical field ought to be something like a pyramid. . Thoroughly studied cases. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Superficially studied cases. We should study and treat many cases superficially, a smaller number more intensively, and at the top of the pyramid which represents our case-work will come a few to which days or weeks of time are devoted. Such a distribution of time is not unsatisfactory or slipshod because not all the needs that come to our attention call for thorough study. Such a pyramidal distribution of our energies is familiar and satisfactory in other fields of life, for instance in the field of friendship. Nobody wants only intimate personal relations. Everybody needs as a basis a host of acquaintances. Out of them all he makes a few friends whom he hopes to know as well as he can know any human being. Almost no one is satisfied to possess only acquaintances or only intimate friends. The properly balanced life has both. Both among those for whom we attempt only slight study or slight service, and among those to whom we devote ourselves intensively, doctor and social assistant alike must count failures as well as successes. We do not try to balance failures and successes if we are wise. The Lord only knows which of our seeming failures are really successes and which of our successes are failures. Some of the people with whom we seem to have made total failures, a more complete knowledge might show to have been actually helped. All this we must face from the start. Then we shall not be disappointed because we have to touch a great many people superficially and to fail a great many times. That is all right so long as we are not always superficial and do not always fail. Such a philosophy is my defence for so elaborate and extensive a scheme of social investigation and social treatment as I have tried to explain in this book. The experienced physician and the well-trained social assistant can judge with some accuracy which cases to select for thorough study and continued devotion. But such a judgment is impossible unless one keeps always ready in the background of one's mind the whole apparatus of social diagnosis and treatment as it might be applied _in toto_, if time and strength were unlimited. FOOTNOTES: [4] _Polonius_ (_showing out the wandering actors_):--My Lord, I will use them according to their desert. _Hamlet_: Odd's bodikin, man, much better! Use every man after his desert and who shall 'scape whipping. [5] In the volume called _The Musical Amateur_. (Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston.) CHAPTER IX