It is sometimes contended that the realisation of the principles of equality and justice for all men has been secured only by the strife of the social classes, by the success of the lower classes in forcing a series of concessions from the ruling classes. This is a very imperfect and partial view of the process. If the ruling classes had consistently sought to maintain their power and exclusive privileges, and to maintain all the rest of society in a state of servitude or serfdom, there is little doubt that they could have done so. But their position has been weakened from within by the extension of their sympathies. Consider the great series of legislative changes which, during the nineteenth century, transformed the social organisation of this country, especially the factory laws, the franchise extension laws, and the laws for the abolition of slavery. These were for the most part of the nature of a voluntary abdication of power on the part of the classes in possession. Consider the topics which chiefly engross the attention of our legislators and are the centre of political and social discussion. They are the providing of a better and freer education for the children of the working classes, who of themselves would probably never have thought of such a thing; the providing of free meals for school children; the providing of work and food for the unemployed; temperance laws, land settlement, and emigration, the eight-hours day, housing of the working classes, free trade and cheap food, old age pensions; all measures for raising the standard of life of the labouring classes and securing them against the tyranny of capital. In respect of our relations to the lower peoples the same proposition holds good. It would be easy for the European nations to exterminate the black people of Africa, and to possess themselves of all their lands[152]. But public opinion will not now allow this; it insists upon our moral obligation towards such peoples, that we are bound to try to help them to survive and to raise themselves to our level of culture. The extension of the sphere of application of imaginative sympathy has then been a factor of prime importance in producing the social evolution which underlies modern progress.