The indifference of the fortunate
comes not so often from a deliberate hardening of the heart as from
a lack of contact with the needy or imagination to picture their
destitution. But blame must rest upon all comfortable citizens who
do not bestir themselves to help in social betterment because it is
too much trouble or requires a sacrifice they are not willing to make.
(2) Another serious obstacle lies in the distrust with which many
people regard any duty which they have not been accustomed to regard
as a duty. This may take the form of an overdeveloped loyalty, that
bows before the sacredness of existing institutions and labels any
reform as "unconstitutional," a departure from the ways that were good
enough for our fathers. It may wear the guise of a lazy piety that
would leave everything with God, accepting social ills as manifestations
of his will, and interference as a sort of arrogant presumption! It
may be a mere mental apathy, an inertia of habit, that sees no call
for a better water supply or bothersome laws about the purity of milk.
Or it may defend itself by pointing out the uncertainties that attend
untried ways and warning against the danger of experimentation. To
these warnings we may reply that our altruistic zeal must, indeed,
be coupled with accurate thinking; unless we have based our proposals
on wide observation and cautious inference we may find unexpected and
baneful results in the place of our sanguine expectations.
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