The Modern Man And His Fellow Man

o exclude, if we were to attempt to do so, any one of the great issues that belong to modern civics. Within the area thus defined lie all the graver questions that touch our social order and life; and an adequate and complete discussion of them, as any one will realize who has attempted to familiarize himself with the sociological writers of our own generation alone, would be a literature in itself. For, hardly anywhere, as a very little reading of it will demonstrate, are there points of view so remote, and lines of argument so divergent, from one another. It will be understood, therefore, I think, that 93 what is now attempted is suggestive rather than exhaustive; introductory rather than final; a stimulus, if one may venture to hope that these words may fulfil so useful a purpose, toward further inquiry, rather than anything so large and difficult as its final answer. The need of this moment?and I shall, for myself, be content if I can be able, though only in some partial measure, to supply it?is to arouse earnest and thoughtful minds to inquiry, and to awaken in those whose calling it is, and will be more and more, to be guides and helpers of their fellow-men in the dark places of life, the aspiration to be at least in some measure competent to a task so noble. To be privileged to teach a mind perplexed, embittered, exasperated by the hard and, as it often seems to him, heartless conditions of our modern industrial life, first, to recognize the causes wh...