i2 4 THE MORAL ASPECT OF 



tions of a worthy life for its citizens, that we read in the 

 history of our own country. "A state," says Professor 

 A. C. Bradley, "which, in however slight a degree, sup- 

 ports science, art, learning, and religion ; which enforces 

 education, and compels the well-to-do to maintain the 

 helpless ; which, for the good of the poor and the weak, 

 interferes with the ' natural ' relations of employer and 

 employed, and regulates, only too laxly, a traffic which 

 joins gigantic evil to its somewhat scanty good ; . . . a 

 state which does all this, and much more of the same kind, 

 cannot, without an unnatural straining of language, be 

 denied to exercise, in the broad sense, a moral function. 

 It will seek not merely 'life,' but good life. It is still, 

 within the sphere appropriate to force, a spiritual power, 

 not only the guardian of the peace and a security for the 

 free pursuit of private ends, but the armed conscience of 

 the community." l 



Our statesmen have been building better than they 

 knew. Amidst the turmoil of debate and the strife of 

 parties they have been engaged upon a great moral enter- 

 prise. By legal enactments that often seemed, even to 

 themselves, to be merely secular in character and to affect 

 the mere material environment within which we live, they 

 have diminished the opportunities of doing wrong and 

 increased the opportunities of doing right ; they have 

 made straight the paths, filled the valleys, brought 

 low the hills and mountains, and made the rough ways 

 smooth for the feet of those whom they govern. And the 

 one question we have now to answer is, not whether, at 

 this supposed crisis of our history, the purposes of our 

 legislators have an ethical meaning, or are out of touch 

 1 Hellenic a, pp. 242, 243. 



