There is another source of error which we must guard against. Social immorality is not always detected even when it exists. Much that is socially immoral both in politics and in business escapes observation. Nevertheless, the agencies for ferreting out and holding up to public condemnation offences against society, are far more efficient and active to-day than they have ever been in the past. Both the corrupt public official and the unscrupulous business man dread the searchlight of public opinion, which is becoming more and more effective as a regulator of conduct with the growth of intelligence among the masses. Nor is it surprising that when the hitherto dark recesses of politics and business are exposed to view, an alarming amount of fraud and corruption should be revealed. We are too prone to forget, however, that publicity is something new--that in our day the seen may bear a much larger proportion to the unseen than it has in the past. What appears, then, to be an increase in business and political immorality may, after all, be largely accounted for as the result of more publicity. Here, again, we see that the facts usually taken to indicate a decline in public morality are susceptible of a very different interpretation. Another feature of present-day society which deserves careful consideration by reason of its far-reaching effect upon public morality is the change now taking place in theological beliefs. Heretofore the church has been by far the most important agency for enforcing conformity to the accepted moral standard. The hope of reward or fear of punishment in the world to come has been the chief support upon which the church has in the past rested its system of social control. But this other-world sanction is now losing its compelling force in consequence of the growing disbelief in the old doctrine of rewards and punishments. The fear of the supernatural, which has its highest development in the savage, steadily declines with the progress of the race. When the general level of intelligence is low, the supernatural sanction is a far more potent means of regulating conduct than any purely temporal authority. But, just in proportion as society advances, the other-world sanction loses its potency and increasing reliance must, therefore, be placed upon purely human agencies. The immediate effect of this change in our attitude toward the hereafter and the supernatural has been to remove or at least to weaken an important restraint upon anti-social tendencies. There is no reason, however, for apprehension as to the final outcome. Society always experiences some difficulty, it is true, in making the transition from the old to the new. In every period of social readjustment old institutions and beliefs lose their efficacy before the new social agencies have been perfected. But if the new is higher and better than the old, the good that will accrue to society will in the long run greatly outweigh any temporary evil.