22 THE WORKING FAITH OF 



that left them year by year would enter upon the privileges 

 and responsibilities of practical life, which is the citizen's 

 life, made aware of the perseverance, the wisdom, and the 

 patience of the will for good which has built the state ; 

 and it is reasonable to believe that they would prove to 

 be "more considerate builders, more wise in spiritual 

 architecture," than their fathers have been. 



In a word, it is time that we should methodise our 

 inquiry into social life, and give to the Political Sciences 

 their due place amongst our studies. The danger of 

 trusting exclusively to social instinct and the sporadic 

 insight of uninstructed empiricism was never so great as 

 it is at the present time. For our ways are in many 

 respects untried. The very structure of human society 

 has changed, even though the fundamental passions of 

 mankind remain the same from age to age. For society no 

 longer consists of petty rural or urban units, each leading 

 its own secluded life, speaking its own dialect, cherishing 

 its own particular customs, meeting its own peculiar wants. 

 Modern society is one tumultuous whole. The powers 

 that bring the success or the failure of the individual 

 merchant or maker of goods travel from afar ; all the lines 

 of social life go out through all the earth. Society is 

 stratified into classes, and the impact of their collision 

 shakes the state. While the state itself is now an empire 

 so vast that we may well do what in us lies to discipline 

 the mind and train the public conscience of those upon 

 whom its responsibilities must rest : and these, in the last 

 resort, are all its citizens. 



Even the growth of social sympathy, which is so char- 

 acteristic of our times, brings its dangers if it be not 

 chastened by a sense of the past and disciplined by science. 



