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 Rh of society had probably never been heard of by the majority of the committee, and they would have had little patience with such abstractions, if they had been mentioned; but the consciences of the members acted in accordance with the principles contained in that philosophical conception of society, and there was aroused a sense of responsibility for outcasts belonging to the community and inadequately provided for by the community. A voluntary social organ was forthwith extemporized,—an organ of intelligence, volition and action; an organ in which the conscience of the community with reference to its helpless poor became conscious and effective. The necessity of performing, by extra-legal processes, the city's work of protecting and caring for a crowd of unprotected men and women against death from exposure and starvation was the task which mobilized the new civic consciousness.

Reference was just made to the generous sentiments of the men and women composing the committee. It is an ungracious task to qualify that allusion, but it would be an omission that would in a measure defeat the purpose of this study if we should neglect the complementary element of sagacity and prudence which speedily found its place in the conscious reckoning of nearly all who united in the relief work. The keynote of modern philosophy is intelligence, or as we speak of it more objectively, publicity. It is claimed very generally among theorists that publicity is the radical treatment of unwholesome social conditions. The claim rests upon the expressed or implied belief which was behind the Socratic thesis, "Sin is ignorance." In other words, given wider and deeper insight into the facts involved in our conduct, and our opinions and then our acts will be modified. There will result in part a reorganization of the egoistic and the altruistic elements of conduct. Not that egoism will be eliminated, but that it will be correlated. The dynamic of social reorganization is the economy of enlightened selfishness. It is only our stupidity which imagines that altruism and egoism are antithetical. They are complementary. They are, as it were, the stroke and the recover; equally essential parts of