Some social evils of the present are perhaps as old as any settled civilization. Such are disease and personal violence. Some are due to forces which have come into existence recently, owing to increased communication and accumulated wealth. Such are extreme poverty and the dehumanizing of social relations. With both kinds of evil we are moved to deal, and we are not deterred from the attempt to reform even long-established evil; for we feel that we do not know what is possible. Nothing is inevitable. This is not the place to give in detail the description of those evils which are being dealt with. It is enough if we recognize that it is no abstract or airy theory of equality or human nature which moves us to action. All real theories are intensely personal: and no theory has ever yet moved men unless they saw through it to the crude facts. However it may be phrased in a theory of society, we recognize it as evil that disease, leading to premature death, should be as common as it is. As a social evil it may be said to disturb seriously the relations between men. We see also that it is a social evil that men should use fraud or violence in compelling labour or in the pursuit of riches. Of the newer social evils there is the physical and spiritual deterioration which seems to result from the massing of men in great cities. There is also the dehumanizing of the relations between master and man. And this is like in kind to the dehumanizing of all functions in the vast institutions of modern times. The director of a company comes to regard himself as part of a machine; and so does the shareholder. So eventually does the agent of the State. Until at last we reach the immense evil that human action is done for which no moral responsibility is felt. How then shall we act? What has been done and what is still hoped for? The answer to such questions will be a statement of ideals. One may speak of ideals of social reform from two different points of view; either with respect to (1) the changing sentiment which produces movements for reform or with respect to (2) the institutional change which embodies that sentiment. The two are complementary parts of one historical movement: and it is difficult to divide them as cause and effect. For sentiment, becoming enthusiasm, certainly causes institutional change, and yet the reformed institution invariably creates a new sentiment. The province of law and of social custom is to lead as well as to register--a dynamic as well as a static influence, to increase order and to incite to liberty. In actual life, therefore, it is often impossible to separate the sentiment from its embodiment in measures of social reform. For purposes of study, however, one may divide. We may put aside the moving sentiments--the passions, however faint, which urge men to wish for a better future--and we may consider first the particular instances of reform. * * * * *