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 374 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

they will be hampered in what they are undertaking ; there will be a minority opposing them at every step with moral scruples. In a word, there has been a colossal advance in the way the moral sense is applied to the problems of life. And it has come within the short space of two thousand years or less.

We have already instanced the advance in the same way in the social consciousness with regard to the respect for life, or in regard to the rights of any individual who may be stricken with disease and not able to provide for himself. Think, for example, again of the astonishing change in the course of two thousand years, by which the compelling force of conscience leads us to recognize it as a principle that a fellow human creature should not be allowed to die of hunger. Would the moral sense of Athens or Rome twenty centuries ago have been disturbed if the people had learned that thousands or millions of human creatures were dying of starvation in other parts of the world? Would they have gone out of their way to send food, or medi- cines, or clothing to such creatures? I doubt if such a thought would have entered their minds.

See, further, how delicate and complex the problem has become with regard to the applications of conscience, when we actually hesitate about helping a poor fellow human creature, lest by giving the assistance in the wrong way we do him more harm than good. Think what it means for a man to be troubled with twinges of conscience, because from an impulse of charity, by a transient misunderstanding of his moral sense, he had given money to an unhappy creature, and then realized that the man might go and spend it in the wrong way and be further demor- alized.

At times it may strike us the other way as if there had been a reaction, as if scruples were less strong nowadays than for- merly. And, in a certain sense, this is true along special lines. It takes a long while, humanly speaking, to build up a public or social sentiment with regard to the application of the moral sense to certain kinds of problems. If the social structure is going through rapid changes, the evolution of conscience, in cer- tain forms of its application, may lag behind for a time.