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and habits which a highly elaborated intellectual civilisation naturally
produces. The sense of duty plays a great part in modern philanthropy,
and lower motives of ostentation or custom mingle largely with the
genuine kindliness of feeling that inspires it; but on the whole it is
probable that men in our day, in doing good to others, look much more
exclusively than in the past to the benefit of the recipient and much
less to some reward for their acts in a future world. As long, too, as
this benefit is attained, they will gladly diminish as much as possible
the self-sacrifice it entails. An eminently characteristic feature of
modern philanthropy is its close connection with amusements. There was a
time when a great philanthropic work would be naturally supported by an
issue of indulgences promising specific advantages in another world to
all who took part in it. In our own generation balls, bazaars,
theatrical or other amusements given for the benefit of the charity,
occupy an almost corresponding place.

At the same time increasing knowledge, and especially the kind of
knowledge which science gives, has in other ways largely affected our
judgments of right and wrong. The mental discipline, the habits of sound
and accurate reasoning, the distrust of mere authority and of untested
assertions and traditions that science tends to produce, all stimulate
the intellectual virtues, and science has done much to rectify the chart
of life, pointing out more clearly the true conditions of human
well-being and disclosing much baselessness and many errors in the
teaching of the past. It cannot, however, be said that the civic or the
military influences have declined. If the State does not hold altogether
the same place as in Pagan antiquity, it is at least certain that in a
democratic age public interests are enormously prominent in the lives of
men, and there is a growing and dangerous tendency to aggrandise the
influence of the State over the individual, while modern militarism is
drawing the flower of Continental Europe into its circle and making
military education one of the most powerful influences in the formation
of characters and ideals.

I do not believe that the world will ever greatly differ about the
essential elements of right and wrong. These things lie deep in human
nature and in the fundamental conditions of human life. The changes that
are taking place, and which seem likely to strengthen in the future, lie
c