en many cases of sects which
have "withdrawn from the world" and lived an isolated life. They were
dissenters from the world philosophy or the life policy current in the
society to which they belonged. The real issue was that they were at war
with its mores. In that war they could not prevail so as to change the
mores. They could not even realize their own plan of life in the midst
of uncongenial mores. The English Puritans of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries tried to transform the mores of their age. Many of
them emigrated to uninhabited territory in order to make a society in
which their ideal mores should be realized. Very many sects and parties
emigrated to North America in the seventeenth century with the same
purpose. The Quakers went to the greatest extreme in adopting dress,
language, manners, etc., which should be different from the current
usages. In all this they were multiplying ritual means of isolation and
of cultivation of their chosen ways of life. They were not strenuous
about theological dogmas. Their leading notions were really about the
mores and bore on social policy. In the Netherlands, in 1657, they
appeared as a militant sect of revolutionary communists and
levelers.[120] In New England they courted persecution. They wanted to
cultivate states of mind and traits of social character which they had
selected as good, and their ritual was devised to that end (humility,
simplicity, peacefulness, friendliness, truth). They are now being
overpowered and absorbed by the mores of the society which surrounds
them. The same is true of Shakers, Moravians, and other sects of
dissenters from the mores of the time and place.

+102. Social policy.+ In Germany an attempt has been made to develop
social policy into an art (_Socialpolitik_). Systematic attempts are
made to study demographical facts in order to deduce from them
conclusions as to the things which need to be done to make society
better. The scheme is captivating. It is one of the greatest needs of
modern states, which have gone so far in the way of experimental devices
for social amelioration and rectification, at the expense of tax payers,
that those devices should be tested and that the notions on which they
are based should be verified. So far as demographical information
furnishes these tests it is of the highest value. When, however, the
statesmen and social philosophers stand ready to undertake any
manipulation of institutions and mores,