inquiries to this one question, "How produce the greatest amount of wealth?" Aristotle, Plato, and the greatest of the ancients never asked, “How can our nation become as rich as possible?" but rather, "How may such economic and social relations be established among citizens as to render them good and happy?" They sought in the business world merely a basis for the highest physical, mental, and spiritual development of man ; but they never looked upon the accumulation of riches as an end in itself. These ancients did not extend the range of ethical obligation beyond nationality; but our age regards all men just as closely connected as the Jews in the eyes of Moses or the Greeks in the mind of Plato. Consequently, we begin to ask similar questions.

The widening and deepening range of ethical obligation rests upon a basis of solid facts. One of the most characteristic features of the latter half of the nineteenth century is the extension of international connections. Men of all nations are drawing nearer and nearer together in every department of social life. After men ceased to regard the foreigner as necessarily an enemy, they long continued to consider him as an inferior. There are still Americans who regard Americans as superior to Englishmen or Germans or Frenchmen; but as knowledge extends, and practical Christianity advances, we feel that God has created all men of one blood. This is seen in international marriages, which have their good side, and that one of no

mean significance. The number daily increases of those who have ties of blood relationship extending to several countries. People of culture and means have friends in three or four countries, and dear friends with whom connection is kept up by correspondence and occasional interchange of visits.

The freedom with which capital moves from country to country has become a matter of common knowledge, and it is often said that capital knows no country, but is strictly cosmopolitan. This is, to be sure, an exaggeration, but it emphasizes forcibly actual facts. The past generation has witnessed a most marvellous growth of a feeling of brotherhood among the wage-earners of modern industrial nations. Possibly, when the history of the nineteenth century comes to be written several generations hence, this will be regarded as the most marvellous feature of the second half of the century. The ties which bind workingmen to workingmen all over the world are very real, and are felt wherever there is an intelligent wage-earning class with a developed class consciousness. Papers devoted to the interests of labor published in every European country find their way to the United States, and our labor papers find their way to all European countries. Even Asia and Africa are coming into this world movement. Workingmen of one nation contribute to those of others to assist them in their upward struggle, and refuse advantages procured at the expense of brothers hom they have never seen. We need not cite

facts in detail when all know that contributions of Australian workingmen helped English workingmen to a victory in one of the most momentous struggles with their employers; and when the fact has been frequently published that workingmen from the continent of Europe, who have been brought to England to take the place of strikers, have returned to their own countries as soon as they found out the true nature of their engagement; and when under such circumstances European workingmen have even crossed the ocean from America to Europe after they had come over here in the hope of finding better wages.

The extension of the range of ethical obligation moves most readily along what may be called horizontal lines that is to say, it is largely an extension within social classes. The English merchant recognizes ties which bind him to the merchants in New York and Paris and Berlin. Manufacturers and employers generally are more and more conscious of relations of brotherhood binding them together, and, as has been just stated, the workingmen of all lands feel their oneness, and their great rallying cry has gone forth, "Workingmen of all lands, unite!" Thus it often happens that there is a better understanding among members of any social class in different countries than among members of different social classes in the same country. It cannot, indeed, be denied that while social classes in different countries are drawing together, there is in some places a growing hostility,

separating class from class in the same country; yet there is also in many quarters evidence of efforts to bring together into brotherly relations all social classes. The range of ethical obligation is in this respect likewise deepening. We are more and more inclined to put ourselves in the place of those who socially are differently situated from ourselves; and hence it is that so many young men and women of means and culture are devoting themselves to social problems in the hope of ameliorating the condition of the less-favored portions of humanity, and that in great centres of education, like Oxford, we find an admirable enthusiasm of humanity which, in its earnestness and intensity, has been compared with the crusades.

II. A More Detailed Examination of Causes and Methods

The fact of an extension and intensive growth of obligation has been described. The basis of this growth is the relations which are formed among men, and these relations are very generally economic in character. Every one of them has some economic content or bearing, and the highest known relationships among men are, in the main, economic in their origin, and reach their highest forms only by an evolutionary process of purification. The relation of husband and wife is a familiar illustration. There does not seem to be any one sole origin of this relationship, but very fre

quently wives certainly have been purchased, and have been economic chattels in early times. As men form relationships and come to know each other through these relationships, there has developed a consciousness of kind, to use this expression which Professor Giddings has made so familiar to us all, and this consciousness of kind has increased with the process of social evolution. The consciousness of kind carries with it a sense of ethical obligation. Whatever may be the deeper underlying causes, we observe this fact. These deeper underlying causes are psychical in character. We learn to know self through other selves. There is a play between the "I" and the "you.” Both are a part of our thought and our feeling. As we come into contact with others through these relationships, we picture a situation in thought of which others form a part. This means, necessarily, a feeling of sympathy, and the sympathy means a recognition of mutual obligation, with growing fulfilment of the obligations made upon us. The passage from self-regarding action to actions which regard others, as well as self, is a growth and a struggle.

The expression, "consciousness of kind," is correct in a very literal sense. Those who are outside the familiar group within which one really lives, whether this group be large or small, are looked upon as strange beings; they are regarded as beings who are essentially different. As individuals grow they repeat in part the history of the race.