1 



THE NEED AND CONDITIONS OF A 

 SCIENCE OF SOCIAL LIFE 



WHAT I have to say in this and the succeeding articles 

 was, in substance, delivered as Lectures under the Dunkin 

 Trust to the students of Manchester College, Oxford. 

 The lectures were addressed primarily to young men about 

 to devote themselves to the service of religion, and to 

 social work as a part of that service. I have re-written 

 them, but I have not cared to expunge all traces of their 

 first purpose. My aim still is to speak to those who are 

 feeling their way into social usefulness, and whose main 

 hope of comprehending their social work lies in looking 

 at it in the large context of religiously inspired thought. 



Religion, in the degree to which it is true and worthy 

 of man, comprises and unites the interests of his life. It 

 is a sustained habit of contemplating human affairs in the 

 light of ultimate issues. It therefore brings order and 

 perspective into our conception of human life, correcting 

 the abstraction of selfishness, the exaggeration of passion, 

 and the urgency of desire. It throws upon the world the 

 quiet light of a larger day, and brings out the deeper sig- 

 |nificance of man's deeds, as the sun the colours of the 



