for reform or with respect to (2) the institutional change
which embodies that sentiment. The two are complementary parts of one
historical movement: and it is difficult to divide them as cause and
effect. For sentiment, becoming enthusiasm, certainly causes
institutional change, and yet the reformed institution invariably
creates a new sentiment. The province of law and of social custom is to
lead as well as to register--a dynamic as well as a static influence, to
increase order and to incite to liberty. In actual life, therefore, it
is often impossible to separate the sentiment from its embodiment in
measures of social reform.

For purposes of study, however, one may divide. We may put aside the
moving sentiments--the passions, however faint, which urge men to wish
for a better future--and we may consider first the particular instances
of reform.

* * * * *

One definite and in some sense new departure in the results of the
shared enthusiasms of nations has been the industrial legislation of
recent years. That has been already dealt with. But, although in an
economic age such as ours industrial reform may seem the most striking,
it is not the only effect of our shared enthusiasm and later ages may
not think it the most important. There has been reform of social evils
owing to the interchange between nations of ideas on education,
religious toleration, medicine, and sanitation, the treatment of
criminals, the suppression of slavery and many other subjects. All these
and many more reforms are, as it were, registered in institutional
(legal or administrative) change.

Perhaps it is better to begin with a definite instance of the working of
an ideal, lest it may seem that we are speaking only of an empty
aspiration. We may take as an example the reforms connected with
medicine and sanitation, and those only in so far as they have been
officially established by the joint action of states. This is a very
restricted embodiment of a social ideal, since of course we may find
the same use of common labour between men of different races in the
private contest with disease or in the municipal preventive medicine
which in every great city owes much to investigators and practitioners
of other nations. But it is better to take the most tangible effect in
purely governmental action.

The French Government proposed an international conference, which met in
1851, to deal with infectious disease; an