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social appraisals of things. This lament is heard only in mod- ern societies, where the youth is carefully inoculated with a set of notions intended to civilize and socialize him. With a peo- ple like Uzbegs or Afghans, that have developed no such subtle and pervasive means of control, it is the young men with their passions and willfulness that endanger the social order, and it is the old men who safeguard it.

IV.

In this century we have listened to thinkers who deny that society needs to concern itself with the control of its members. Dispensing with the sanctions of religion, the authority of moral ideas, and the compulsion of law, they point to democratic prog- ress as the natural cure for moral ills. Let free course be given to the improvement of technique, the diffusion of light, and the spread of new tastes. In the evolution of desires among an intelligent people, coupled with the means of satisfying them, lies a better guarantee for order than jails and churches, Scrip- tures and Sunday schools. Led by these ideas a considerable party makes " Enlightenment," "Progress," " Liberal Thought " the watchwords, not only for the increase of happiness, but, as well, for moral advance.

These ideas have a seeming justification in the undoubted fact that the great democratic diffusions of prosperity have been attended by an upward development of wants. But this is not due to the mysterious law that "the satisfaction of any want gives rise to a new want of a higher order than the want whose place it takes," 1 but to the fact that the conservative forces of society preside over valuations and consequently over the direction of desires. The mere multiplication of wants is no guarantee of moral progress. The instinct is sound that regards luxury as a spur in the flanks of egoism and not a curb. Far too often has there been an evolution of wants that the social spirit was pow- erless to control. Undoubtedly with the growing passion for the sweets of philosophy, poetry, music, games, and drama,

1 BLAIR, Human Progress, p. 168.